SITTING at the door next morning, I saw a very trimly-dressed damsel of twenty or thereabouts, coming briskly along under the trees, which there, as in every other Mormon settlement, shade the side-walk. She was the schoolmistress, I learned, and very soon her scholars began to pass along. I had thus an opportunity of observing the curious, happy-go-lucky style in which "schooling" is carried on, and I was sorry to see it, for Mormonism stands urgently in need of more education, and it is pure folly to spend half the revenue of the Territory annually in a school establishment, if the children and their parents are permitted to suppose that education is voluntary and a matter of individual whim. Some of the leading members of the Church are conspicuous defaulters in this matter, and do their families a gross wrong by setting "the chores" and education before them as being of equal importance. Even in the highest class of the community children go to school or stay away almost as they like, and provided a little boy or girl has the shrewdness to see that he or she can relieve the father or mother from trouble by being at home to run errands and do little jobs about the house, they can, I regret to think, regulate the amount of their own schooling as they please. I know very well that Utah compares very favourably, on paper, with the greater part of America, but I have compiled and examined too many educational statistics in my time to have any faith in them.
But in the matter of abstinence from strong drink and stimulants, the leaders of the Church set an admirable example, and I found it very difficult most of the time, and quite impossible part of it, to keep my whisky flask replenished.
My system of arriving at the truth as to the existence of spirit stores in any particular settlement, was to grumble and complain at having no whisky, and to exaggerate my regrets at the absence of beer. The courtesy of my hosts was thus challenged, and of the sincerity of the efforts made to gratify my barbaric tastes, I could have no doubt whatever. In most cases they were quite ignorant of even the cost of liquor, and on one occasion a man started off with a five-dollar piece I had given him to get me "five dollars' worth of whisky in this bottle," pointing to my flask. I explained to him that I only wanted the flask replenished, and that there would be change to bring back. He did not get any at all, however.
On one occasion the Bishop brought in, in evident triumph, two bottles of beer. On another I went clandestinely with a Mormon, after dark, and drank some whisky "as a friend," and not as a customer, with another Mormon, who "generally kept a bottle on hand" for secret consumption. That they would both have been ashamed for their neighbours to know what they were about, I am perfectly convinced. On a third occasion an official brought me half a pint of whisky, and the price was a dollar.
Now it is quite impossible for me, who have thus made personal experiment, to have any doubt as to the prevailing sobriety of these people. I put them repeatedly to the severest test that you can apply to a hospitable man, by asking point-blank for ardent spirits. Sometimes, in an off-hand way, I would give money and the flask to a lad, and ask him to "run across to the store and get me a little whisky or brandy." He would take both and meander round in an aimless sort of way. But I might almost as well have asked him to go and buy me a few birds-of-paradise or advance sheets of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." The father or a neighbour might perhaps suggest a "likely" place to get some stimulant, but, as a rule, the quest was unconditionally abandoned as hopeless.
The Elders of the Church set a strict example themselves, discouraging, by their own abstinence, indulgence even in tea and coffee. You are asked in a settlement whether you will have tea or coffee, just as in England you would be asked whether you would drink ale or claret. A strong man takes a cup of tea as a lady in Europe might take a glass of sherry, as justified by unusual exercise and fatigue. Being a Londoner, I entertain a most wholesome suspicion of water as a drink, and I reverence fresh milk. In rural Utah, milk being so abundant, the people think little of it, but they pride themselves on their water.
"What do you think of that water, sir?" was a question that puzzled me to answer at first, for I am not a connoisseur in drinking-water. If it had been a claret, I might have made a pretence of criticism. But water! Or if they had let me wash in it, I would have told them whether I thought it "hard" or "soft." But to pass an opinion on a particular tumbler of water, as if it were a special brand laid down by my host for his own drinking, completely puzzled me. I can no more tell waters apart than I can tell Chinamen. Of course I can discriminate between the outcome of the sea and of sulphur springs. But for the rest, it seems to me that they only differ in their degrees of cleanliness, or, as scientific men say, to "the properties which they hold in solution," that is mud. And mud, I take it, is always pretty much the same.
So at first when my host would suddenly turn to me with, "What do you think of that water, sir?" I made the mistake of supposing it might be one of the extraordinary aqueous novelties for which this territory is so remarkable—hot-geyser water or petrifying water, or something else of the kind—and would smack my lips critically and venture on a suggestion of "lime," or "soda," or "alkali." But my host was always certain to be down with, "Oh, no; I assure you. That is reckoned the best water in the county!"
I soon discovered, however, that the right thing to say was that I preferred it, "on the whole," to the water at the last place. This was invariably satisfactory—unless, of course, there was a resident of "the last place" present, when an argument would ensue. These people, in fact, look upon their drinking-water just as on the continent they look upon their vins ordinaires, or in England upon their local brews, and to the last I could not help being delighted at the manner in which a jug of water and tumblers were handed about among a party of fatigued and thirsty travellers. I always took my share becomingly, but sometimes, I must confess, with silent forebodings.
For in some places there are springs which petrify, by coating with lime, any substance they flow over, and I did not anticipate with any gratification having my throat lined with cement, or my stomach faced with building-stone.