Says he, firmly: “We will!”
Says I: “I tell you agin that you shan’t; and if you do I’ll know the reason why. I tell you that you shall drop it right there, by that salt lake, and let it lay there. It needs brine if anything ever did. You shan’t make no move to carry it a step further. You shall not carry this godless crime, a disgrace to religion and civilization, into new territories. The green turf of them lands is too fresh and bright to be blood-stained by the feet of weepin’ wimmen, bearin’ this heaviest of crosses that was ever tackled by ’em. You shall not darken the sunny skies and pollute the sweet air of new lands with this moral pestilence.”
Says he: “We will!”
Says I, firmly and sternly: “You won’t; and when I say you won’t, I mean it.”
“Wall,” says he, with a proud mean, “how are you goin’ to help yourself?”
Says I, in loud, excited axents: “If I can’t stop you myself, I know who can, and I will go to Uncle Sam myself. I’ll have a plain talk with that good old man. I’ll jest put it into his head what you are a tryin’ to do, and I’ll hunch him up, and make him stop you.”
Says he: “Don’t you s’pose sin and sorrow will ever be carried into the territories only as they are carried in by Mormons?”
THE OLD MAN.
“Yes, I do,” says I. “I s’pose that whenever humanity is sot down under the light of the Eternal, it will forevermore, as it has forever in the past, be followed by two shadows, the joyful and the sorrowful. Human nature can’t help itself; the Eternal Soul above will shine on, and the human nature below will throw its shadows—the dark one and the light one, first one and then the other, unbeknown to us, followin’ us all the time, and will follow us till the darkness of the human is all lost in the light of the divine. There hain’t no territories been discovered distant enough for the human soul to escape from itself—from the shadow of sorrow. I hain’t said there wuz. Neither have I said it could escape from sin. I s’pose the old man in human nature won’t never be wholly drove out of it this side of Eternity; and I s’pose wherever that old man is there will be caperin’ and cuttin’ up and actin’. But, as I have said more’n forty times, you ort to whip that old man, make him behave himself as well as you possibly can, be awful severe with him, and keep him under. But you don’t try to. You jest pet that old man, and humor him, and encourage him in his caperin’s. You try to make sin and cuttin’ up and actin’ respectable; protect it by the law.