The good looking garage helper at Cardston met us with a beaming smile.
“I’ve filled your radiator,” he said, “and your canteen, and put in oil and gas, and I’ve infatuated all your tires.”
It was this same delightful Mr. Malaprop of whom we inquired, discussing various automobiles, “Do you like the Marmon?”
“I’m not one myself,” he answered cautiously, “but my father-in-law is, and I get on pretty good with him.”
Through his connections-in-law he obtained for us the privilege of seeing the interior of the new Mormon Temple, which is to rival Salt Lake’s. Our unfailing luck had brought us here at the only interval when Gentiles are allowed to enter a Mormon church, after completion and before its dedication. This little town of not more than five thousand inhabitants, surrounded by the brown, parched prairie, is dominated by a million dollar edifice, far more beautiful than the parent Temple in Utah, and magnificent enough for any city. A perfect creation in itself, fitted like the Temple of Solomon with matched marble and granite brought from the ends of the earth, it looks strangely out of keeping with the bare shacks and ugly little frontier shanties surrounding it. Its architecture was modified from Aztec designs. The young Salt Lake Mormons whose plans won the award in competition with many renowned architects achieved an arrestingly original building of massive dignity and grace, managing at the same time to conform to the exacting requirements of Mormon symbolism. No two rooms are built on the same level, but rise in a gradual ascent to the roof, from which one may look miles over the rolling plains of Alberta. This requirement, which must have caused the designers and builders much anguish, is meant to symbolize the soul’s ascent from a gross and carnal to a spiritual life. The ground floor has many dressing-rooms where those who “work for the dead” change from street clothes to the garments prescribed by Mormon ritual. Above are rooms paneled in the most costly woods,—Circassian walnut, tulipwood, mahogany and rosewood,—for the use of the church officials, and beyond these, larger rooms called “Earth,” “Purgatory,” “Heaven,” decorated with beautiful mural paintings with appropriate scenes. “Earth” held great attractions for me, with its frieze of jungle beasts threading their way through gnarled forests,—an able and artistic piece of work, done by Prof. Evans of Salt Lake. The stout little Cockney Mormon who accompanied the Bishop and ourselves through the Temple gave us this information, though from his lips it sounded like “Prof. Heavens, of the Heart Department.” We passed on from Earth to the assembly room in the center of the Temple, a magnificent chamber with an altar, where services are held and marriages performed.
“Here, if you wish,” the Bishop said, “you can be sealed to eternity.”
Toby who had all along, I think, expected to be pounced on as a possible plural wife backed away from the altar, but the Bishop was speaking impersonally. He explained that any Mormon happy in his present matrimonial venture (I use the singular, as polygamy is now illegal both in Canada and the United States) may extend that happiness to eternity, and insure getting the same wife in Heaven by this ceremony. He himself had been sealed,—“the children sitting on each side of us in their white robes,”—the ceremonial garment,—and was secure in the belief that his family happiness would continue after death.
A MORMON IRRIGATED VILLAGE.
