lts of the practice is the indifference
with which an incestuous connection is tolerated. The cohabitation, with
the same man, of a mother, and her daughter by a previous marriage, is
not unfrequent; and there are other instances even more disgusting. One
or two of them will exemplify the character of the whole. One George D.
Watt, an Englishman, residing at Salt Lake City, has for his fourth
wife his own half-sister, who had been previously divorced from Brigham
Young; and one Aaron Johnson, the Bishop of the town of Springville,
on Lake Utah, has seven wives, four of whom are sisters, and his own
nieces. Young himself has declared in print, that he looks forward to
the time when his son by one wife shall marry his daughter by another.
Marriages also are effected with girls who are mere children. Accustomed
from their cradles to sights and sounds calculated to impart precocious
development, they mature rapidly, and few of them remain single after
attaining the age of sixteen. They look around for husbands, and
understand, that, if they marry young men and become first wives, in
course of time other wives will be associated with them; and they
conclude, therefore, that it is as well for themselves to unite with
some Bishop or High-Priest, with perhaps half-a-dozen wives already, who
is able to feed his family well and clothe them decently; so they plunge
into polygamy at once. Another result of the practice is universal
obscenity of language among both sexes. The published sermons of the
Mormon leaders are utterly vile in this respect, although they are
somewhat expurgated before being printed. They consider no language
profane from which the name of the Deity is exempted.

There is, unquestionably, much unhappiness in families where polygamy
prevails,--daily bickering, jealousies, and heart-burnings,--but it
is carefully concealed from the knowledge of the public. If domestic
troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually
had to Brigham Young for a divorce. There are women in Salt Lake City
who have been married and divorced half-a-dozen times within a year. The
first wife maintains a supremacy over all the others. On the occasion
of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of
"sealing" is afterwards administered by Young. By the civil process,
in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband "for
time," and by the ecclesiastical solemnization "for eterni