ormonism earlier than her husband, and, by taking the
initiative, secured for herself the only true wifely place in the
harem,--the marital after-thoughts of Brother Heber being her servants
rather than her sisters. She was most unmistakably his favorite.

One day in the Opera-House at Salt Lake, when the carpenters were laying
the floor for the Fourth-of-July-Eve Ball, Heber and I got talking of
the _pot-pourri_ of nationalities assembled in Utah. Heber waxed
unctuously benevolent, and expressed his affection for each succeeding
race as fast as mentioned.

"I love the Danes dearly! I've got a Danish wife." Then turning to a
rough-looking carpenter, hammering near him,--"You know Christiny,--eh,
Brother Spudge?"

"Oh, yes! know her very well!"

A moment after,--"The Irish are a dear people. My Irish wife is among
the best I've got."

Again,--"I love the Germans! Got a Dutch wife, too! Know Katrine,
Brother Spudge? Remember she couldn't scarcely talk a word o' English
when she come,--eh, Brother Spudge?"

Brother Spudge remembered,--and Brother Heber continued to trot out the
members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more
humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch
upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this
time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his
connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on
the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a
proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from the
carpenter, be replied, gravely,--

"Yes! that is my first wife, and the best woman God ever made!"

The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying
Mormon sociology as three months' ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not
have given me. Though Mormondom is disloyal to the core, it still
patronizes the Fourth of July, at least in its phase of festivity,
omitting the patriotism, but keeping the fireworks of our Eastern
celebration, substituting "Utah" for "Union" in the Buncombe speeches,
and having a ball instead of the Declaration of Independence. All the
saints within half a day's ride of the city come flocking into it to
spend the Fourth. A well-to-do Mormon at the head of his wives and
children, all of whom are probably eating candy as they march through
the metropolitan streets in solid column, looks to the uninitiated like
the p