He confessed with some delicacy of language and words of bitter regret
that there had been of late some cases in Nauvoo such as were common
enough, alas! in Gentile society, but whose occurrence among the Saints
had caused excitement. Joseph Smith paced Susannah's room; his
harassment and distress on behalf of his people were either deeply felt
or well feigned, and Susannah had no doubt that his feeling was true,
that phase of him being for the time uppermost. When he came to sit down
beside her again, it was to sketch the misery to men and women and
children which existed in Gentile society from this evil, which he
affirmed to run riot through the warp and woof of so-called orthodox
communities.

Her ignorance of the world was so great that she assumed this accusation
to be of the same stuff as the anathemas he constantly cast against the
integrity of the orthodox clergy. The point that she grasped was that he
believed the thing that he said. She had at first assumed that should he
propose to institute polygamy she would know then, once for all, that he
was a villain; but now this test deserted her. He was meditating this
step, and it seemed that his arguments, if the facts on which he based
them were admitted, had some value.

"There's that for one thing, Sister Susannah," Smith went on in a broken
voice; "it has been a mean sort of thing to have to tell you, but it
had to be said, and now there's another thing to be considered. Among
the Gentiles who is it that has the most children? Is it your man that's
high up in the ranks of society, who has money enough to give them a
good education, to feed and clothe 'em? or is it your poor man, whose
children run over one another like little pigs in a sty, and he caring
nothing for them, and they have rickety bones and are half starved and
grow up to be idle and steal? I have noticed that a good man is apt to
have good children, and a clever man is apt to have clever children, and
a worthless man is apt to have worthless children. Ain't that so? And
what sort of children do we want the most of? Well, in this way we
wouldn't let your worthless fellow have any wife at all until he had
brought forth fruit meet for repentance, and your common man only one;
but I don't see but that it would be a real benefit to the State if your
good, all-round man, as would be apt to have pious and clever children,
had two or three or four families agrowing up to be an honour to him and
to th