Here, again, I found the trail of that monster—Polygamy. This time in the home of my dearest friend. From the moment when she and I had mingled our tears together in Switzerland, over that abomination, life had been to me one long, weary, sickening battle with my own heart; one futile attempt to fully convince myself that Polygamy was right and that I was wrong. I certainly did believe, or thought that I believed, the doctrine was true. But at times nature prevailed in the struggle, and womanly indignation and anger rose in arms against faith. These feelings were, however, at once and unhesitatingly subdued; faith returned triumphant, and I was again convinced that the Revelation must have been the will of the Lord, and that my duty was to submit, but not to question. In moments of comparative self-control I had even tried, as a Missionary’s wife, to justify it to others, but only to witness an outburst of sorrow and anger, and to feel still more the weakness of my position. That had been my own experience; but how had the time passed with my dear old friend? She must, no doubt, have been as greatly disappointed as I was when she came to Zion and saw things as they really were, and not as they had been represented to us.
My own eyes had certainly been opened not a little since my arrival. Instead of finding the people enjoying the comforts and blessings of life, which we had been taught were strewn around them in profuse abundance, we found among all but the leading families the greatest poverty and privation. The majority of the people were living in little log or adobe houses, of one or at the utmost two rooms, of most primitive construction, and without the slightest convenience of any description. Their food was bread and molasses, and it might be an occasional morsel of meat; but many of them scarcely ever indulged in the latter, or in any article of grocery, for months at a time. Their floors and walls were bare, and their clothing poor and scanty; and yet, destitute as they were of all the comforts and conveniences of life, they were conscientiously endeavouring like good Saints to practise Polygamy, because, as they believed, the Lord had commanded it.
In respect to education they were in even a worse position. Books, pictures, and periodicals of any kind, there were none, with the exception of that dreary organ of the church, the Deseret News—the soporific influence of which some wicked Apostate has likened to a dose of Winslow’s soothing syrup. Brigham Young, himself an illiterate man, and the leading Elders, frowned upon every attempt to raise the intellectual status of the people; and so little encouragement was given, that no one could afford to keep school. The consequence was, that the boys and girls grew up with little more education than their own sense of necessity taught them to acquire for themselves; and it was not until very recently that any suitable efforts were made to supply trained teachers and to open schools in which a thorough education could be afforded.
I have already mentioned the sermons of the Tabernacle, and observed how little calculated they were to elevate the character or cultivate the minds of the people. I have before me as I write a choice morsel extracted from one of the sermons of Heber C. Kimball, which I think I must give for the reader’s benefit.
Fancy an “Apostle!” thus addressing a large and mixed congregation of men, women, and children:—
“Here are some edicated men jest under my nose. They come here and they think they know more than I do, and then they git the big head, and it swells and swells until it gits like the old woman’s squash—you go to touch it and it goes ker-smash; and when you look for the man, why he ain’t thar. They’re jest like so many pots in a furnace—yer know I’ve been a potter in my time—almighty thin and almighty big; and when they’re sot up the heat makes ’em smoke a little, and then they collapse and tumble in, and they aint no whar.”
This was Heber’s style in general. Next to making modest people blush, nothing pleased him better than to annoy or ridicule any one who had the smallest pretensions to education; and yet naturally Heber was a kind-hearted man. Brigham’s style is very little better, and the substance of his discourses quite as bad. I will give a very favourable specimen, taken from a sermon on Polygamy, delivered some years ago, touched up and corrected, and published in the official organ, the Deseret News:—
“Men will say, ‘My wife, though a most excellent woman, has not seen a happy day since I took my second wife.’ ‘No, not a happy day for a year,’ says one; and another has not seen a happy day for five years.
“I am going to set every woman at liberty, and say to them, Now go your way—my women with the rest; go your way. And my wives have got to do one of two things; either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world and live their religion, or they must leave; for I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. ‘What, first wife too!’ Yes, I will liberate you all. I know there is no cessation to the everlasting whinings of many of the women in this territory; I am satisfied that this is the case; and if the women will turn from the commandments of God, and continue to despise the order of heaven, I will pray that the curse of the Almighty may be close to their heels, and that it may be following them all the day long. And those that enter into it (the celestial order) and are faithful, I will promise them that they shall be queens in heaven and rulers to all eternity.
“Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned.”