has worked upon the theme, while every scrap
of history which offered to give any light upon the Mormon organization
she has devoured. Mormonism has been to her like a fever. It has run
its course and now she is going away. If she proposes to lecture, she
ought to be able to prepare a better lecture on Mormonism than she has
ever yet delivered; if a book is in process of incubation it ought to
be of more value than any former book on this subject. Lecture or book
will be intense enough to satisfy all demands. The 'Tribune' gives the
world notice in advance that Miss Field has a most intimate knowledge
of the Mormon kingdom."

Returning to the East she stopped on the way in Missouri and at Nauvoo,
Illinois, looking up all the old camping-grounds of Mormonism, and
meeting and interviewing people who had been connected with it,
including two sons of Joseph Smith, Miss Field opened her course of
lectures on this subject in Boston last November, before a brilliant and
distinguished audience, including the Governor and other officials of
state, Harvard University professors, and men and women eminent in art,
literature and society. She dealt with the political crimes of the
Mormons, arguing that the great wrong was not, as many had believed,
polygamy, but treason! Polygamy, though "the cornerstone of the Mormon
church," was not inserted in its printed articles of faith and was not
taught until the unwary had been "gathered to Zion." The monstrosity of
the "revelation" on celestial marriage; the tragic unhappiness of Mormon
women; the elastic conscience of John Taylor, "prophet, seer and
revelator" to God's chosen people, were vividly depicted. Her extracts
from Brigham Young's sermons, and from those of his counsellors, are
forcible arguments on the Gentile side. Indeed, throughout her entire
discourse, Miss Field clinches every statement with Mormon proof, rarely
going to Gentile authorities for vital facts connected with her subject.
The lecturer's sense of humor betrayed itself now and then, when, with
fervor, she related an incident in her own experience, or quoted a "Song
of Zion." The refrain of one of these songs still rings in our ears:

Then, oh, let us say
God bless the wife that strives
And aids her husband all she can
To obtain a dozen wives!

The prodigious contrast between the preaching and practice of polygamy
was fully displayed. Mormons claim that there is a vast difference
b