ntered into a new world where,
in conversation, every one was either a Mormon or a Gentile. It is not
seemly for a free and independent citizen to dub himself a Gentile, but
the Mayor of Ogden--which is the Gentile city of the valley--told me
that there must be some distinction between the two flocks.

Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or the shining levels of the
Salt Lake had been reached, that mayor--himself a Gentile, and one
renowned for his dealings with the Mormons--told me that the great
question of the existence of the power within the power was being
gradually solved by the ballot and by education.

All the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it. And the valley
is very fair. Bench after bench of land, flat as a table against the
flanks of the ringing hills, marks where the Salt Lake rested for awhile
in its collapse from an inland sea to a lake fifty miles long and thirty
broad.

There are the makings of a very fine creed about Mormonism. To begin
with, the Church is rather more absolute than that of Rome. Drop the
polygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand deal lightly with
certain forms of excess; keep the quality of the recruit down to the
low mental level, and see that the best of all the agricultural
science available is in the hands of the elders, and there you have
a first-class engine for pioneer work. The tawdry mysticism and the
borrowing from Freemasonry serve the low caste Swede and Dane, the
Welshman and the Cornish cotter, just as well as a highly organized
heaven.

Then I went about the streets and peeped into people's front windows,
and the decorations upon the tables were after the manner of the year
1850. Main Street was full of country folk from the desert, come in to
trade with the Zion Mercantile Co-operative Institute. The Church, I
fancy, looks after the finances of this thing, and it consequently pays
good dividends.

The faces of the women were not lovely. In-deed, but for the certainty
that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undivided love
as the beautiful, it seems that polygamy was a blessed institution for
the women, and that only the dread threats of the spiritual power could
drive the hulking, board-faced men into it. The women wore hideous
garments, and the men appeared to be tied up with strings.

They would market all that afternoon, and on Sunday go to the
praying-place. I tried to talk to a few of them, but they spoke stran