We passed to Eden. Here were pictures of the whole animal creation in benevolent and sentimental happiness; the tiger browsing beside the lamb, and the lion and the giddy goat frisking around.
The guide purveyed the story of the Garden of Eden, but left out Adam and Eve, and I walked away from him to wander round and seek the portraits of our first parents. They were not included. But I found that the painting of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and of the Tree of Life were concave at the base, and that there was a recess and an alcove to each. So there was a place for a living Adam and Eve to sit, side by side, when the meditation on the Garden was going on. My idea is that Eve would be seated in the Tree of Life and Adam in the Tree of Knowledge. But that is surmise. The guide would not tell us what the alcoves were for, but in the eye of curious imagination I saw Adam and Eve sitting there in primitive innocence whilst the hearts of the elders were inditing of a good matter.
From Eden we went to the Earth-natural, which was a hideous place where every animal was depicted with a vicious expression. A large mad coyote or, was it a hyena? seemed to control the atmosphere of the chamber.
“’Ere we ’ave the Hearth after sin ’as crept in,” said the guide. “’Ere is life as we know it, full of sin which you can’t escape. You can all learn a great deal from them pictures. Think of Hadam and Eve. ’Ave you ever thought of it—’ow God gave them the garden of Eden, and of the ‘experience’ ’e made them ’ave there. Isn’t it true about us? ’E didn’t mean that nothin’ should ever ’appen to us. ’E brought us into the world that we might ’ave an experience.”
So we went on to the Marriage Room, which was entirely bare, and no one could say what it would be like when the decorations and the furniture had been added. I judged it time for me to cease being Simple Simon, so I asked the guide as humbly as I could whether the marriages were legal when the ceremony was performed.
“Yes,” said he. “You ’ave a legal marriage.”
“But polygamy?” I queried, and I saw his eyes flame.
“Polygamy ’as been done away with long ago when Utah was received into the Union,” he answered in a gruff way.
“And what happened to the other wives when it was abolished?” asked some one else very softly. But the guide did not reply. Instead he began to hurry us out of the building. We had only seen a third of it and were loth to go. But there was nothing for it. We managed to get a last glimpse of an assembly hall with large frescoes on the walls, depicting Christ distributing the Bread and the Wine to the Mound-Builders, or Indians of South America, and underneath was written III. Nephi 15. Another fresco had reference to the Book of Josiah, which is part of Mormon Holy Writ—found by Joseph Smith, written on gold plates.
The guide hurried us to the door. “I’ve some pictures of the Temple for sale,” said he to the farm-women. But they seemed all to have been scared by my question about polygamy. Vachel and I stopped to look at the pictures. After all, they were only picture-postcards of the exterior. We bought three.