Chapter XV

It is a luscious country for thrilling evening stories about
assassinations of intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of
anything more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a
Gentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how Burton galloped
in among the pleading and defenceless "Morisites" and shot them down, men
and women, like so many dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel,
shot Drown and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt.
And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing. And how
heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks about Brigham, or
polygamy, or some other sacred matter, and the very next morning at
daylight such parties are sure to be found lying up some back alley,
contentedly waiting for the hearse.

And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these
Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder,
or a bishop, marries a girl--likes her, marries her sister--likes her,
marries another sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries her
mother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather,
and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young
thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable
grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's
esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this
dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest of mother
and daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her own mother
in rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit to because
their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and
the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in
the world to come--and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say
anything about that.

According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham Young's harem
contains twenty or thirty wives. They said that some of them had grown
old and gone out of active service, but were comfortably housed and cared
for in the henery--or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along
with each wife were her children--fifty altogether. The house was
perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children were still. They all took
their meals in one room, and a happy and home-like sight it was
pronounced to be. None of our party got an opportunity to take dinner
with Mr. Young, but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have
enjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a preposterous
account of the "calling of the roll," and other preliminaries, and the
carnage that ensued when the buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished
rather too much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart