d by little
more than the difference between logs and clapboards,) there is still no
air about it of being the abode of happy people, fond of each other, and
longing after it in absence. It looks like a mere inclosure to eat and
sleep in. Nobody seems to have taken any pride in it, to feel any
ambition for it. Woman's tender little final touches, which make a dear
refuge out of a mud-cabin, and without which palatial brownstone is only
a home in the moulding-clay,--those dexterous ornamentations which make
so little mean so much,--the brier-rose-slip by the doorstep, growing
into the fragrant welcome of many Junes,--the trellised
Madeira-vines,--the sunny spot of chrysanthemums, charming summer on to
the very brink of frost,--all these things are utterly and everywhere
lacking to the Mormon inclosure. Sometimes we passed a fence which
guarded three houses instead of one. Abundant progeny played at their
doors, or rolled in their yard, watched by several unkempt, bedraggled
mothers owning a common husband,--and we could easily understand how
neither of these should feel much interest in the looks of a demesne
held by them in such unhappy partnership. The humblest New-England
cottage has its climbing flowers at the door-post, or its garden-bed in
front; but how quickly would these wither, if the neat, brisk
house-mistress owned her husband in common with Mrs. Deacon Pratt next
door!

The first Mormon household I ever visited belonged to a son of the
famous Heber Kimball, Brigham Young's most devoted follower, and next to
him in the Presidency. It was the last stage-station but one before we
entered Salt Lake, situated at the bottom of a green valley in Parley's
Canon (named after the celebrated Elder, Parley Pratt); and as it looked
like the residence of a well-to-do farmer, I went in, and asked for a
bowl of bread and milk,--the greatest possible luxury after a life of
bacon and salt-spring water, such as we had been leading in the
mountains. A fine-looking, motherly woman, with a face full of
character, gray-haired, and about sixty years old, rose promptly to
grant my request, and while the horses were changing I had ample time to
make the acquaintance of two pretty young girls, hardly over twenty,
holding two infants, of ages not more than three months apart. Green as
I was to saintly manners, I supposed that one of these two young mothers
had run in from a neighbor's to compare babies with the mistress of the
house,