“Why, Sister Ann, what a droll idea!” I said.
“Sister Stenhouse,” she replied, quite seriously, “it’s very wrong of you to talk so. Some of the best Saints have stood proxy in this way. There was one lady who stood proxy for the Empress Josephine, and her son stood for Napoleon, and some one else for Washington. Queen Elizabeth, too, has been baptized by proxy. And now Napoleon and Washington are both Mormon Elders, and I suppose some one will be married for Queen Elizabeth, and she’ll enter into Polygamy. Do you know, Sister Stenhouse, there was one brother who, out of pure kindness, said he would be baptized for the thief on the cross, for he supposed that no one else would take pity on him, and a sister who was present said she would be baptized for his wife, if Brother Brigham thought he ever had one. I’ve been persuading my Henry to be baptized for Henry the Eighth, for I’m sure he needed baptism for the remission of sins; and he—I mean my Henry—has promised me to do so; but he says that he means to ask Brother Brigham first before he is married for him—if ever he is—as King Henry was almost a polygamist in his way, and my husband thinks there is not much need to be married for him at all.”
“I can’t help being amused,” I said. “Of course I have often heard of being baptized for the dead, and I know the Elders say that St. Paul spoke of it in one of his epistles, but I never thought of it in that light; I always thought we should have to wait till the Temple was finished.”
“That’s true, Sister Stenhouse,” she replied; “all the marriages of all the Saints—of every one, in fact, on the face of the earth—ought to be solemnized in the Temple here in Salt Lake City, and every one ought to receive their Endowments in it; but as it is not yet finished, the Lord permits us to be married, and everything else, in the Endowment House. But you know yourself that there’s a record kept, and that, when the Temple is finished, the ceremony will be all gone through with again. I’ve heard it said that many of the Elders and their wives will live there, and that day and night perpetually the ceremonies will be going on. You ought to be baptized, however, now for as many relations as you can think of.”
“I think I shall wait, Sister Ann,” I said, “until I can find a Queen Fanny, and then I’ll be baptized for her.”
She did not like me saying this, for she evidently thought I was jesting. I was not jesting, however, but I felt greatly amused, for this peculiar doctrine of the Saints had never struck me in such an odd light before. Sister Ann was shocked at the way in which I viewed her strange stories, but “I’ll come again in the course of a day or two, Sister Stenhouse,” she said, “and put you all straight.”
CHAPTER XXXIV.
MY DAUGHTER BECOMES THE FOURTH WIFE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG’S SON—THE SECOND ENDOWMENTS.
After I had consented, and in reality had given my husband a second wife, my status in Mormon polygamic society was very considerably improved. First wives who lived in, and firmly believed, this “Order of Celestial Marriage,” tried in every way to make me feel that I was one with them; and those who had not much faith felt more kindly towards me, because I had been caught in the same snare with themselves.