rincipal of a female seminary, weak in its deportment, taking out
his charge for an airing.

Last Fourth of July, it may be remembered, fell on a Saturday. In their
ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to
their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which
would delight Lord Shaftesbury. Accordingly, in order that their
festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they
had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the Fourth.
I could not realize the risk of such an encroachment when I read the
following sentence printed on my billet of invitation:--

"_Dancing to commence at_ 4 P.M."

Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only
Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the
neighborhood of three thousand saints. Under these circumstances I felt
like the three-thousandth homoeopathic dilution of monogamy. Morality in
this world is so mainly a matter of convention that I dreaded to appear
in decent polygamic society, lest respectable women, owning their
orthodox tenth of a husband, should shrink from the pollution of my
presence, whispering, with a shudder, "Ugh! Well, I never! How that
one-wifed reprobate can dare to show his face!" But they were very
polite, and received me with as skilfully veiled disapprobation as is
shown by fashionable Eastern belies to brilliant seducers immoral in
_our_ sense. Had I been a woman, I suppose there would have been no
mercy for me.

I sought out our entertainer, Brigham Young, to thank him for the
flattering exception made in our Gentile favor. He was standing in the
dress-circle of the theatre, looking down on the dancers with an air of
mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership. I could excuse the latter,
for Utah belongs to him of right. He may justly say of it, "Is not this
great Babylon which I have built?" His sole executive tact and personal
fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society.
While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most
heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of
Christendom will continue builded up into a coherent nationality. The
instant he crumbles, Mormondom and Mormonism will fall to pieces at
once, irreparably. His individual magnetism, his executive tact, his
native benevolence, are all immense; I regard him as Louis Napoleon,
_plus_ a heart; but these advantages would