;
others to socialize the state. There are also religious societies here
of every description, such as the Millerites who are now preparing for
the Second Advent of Christ which they believe will take place in 1843.
They are already making ready to leave their business, get their white
robes, and await the Epiphany. In this state, at Nauvoo, a group called
Mormons, who came here from Missouri, founded their faith upon a new
revelation brought to light by two miraculous stones, said to have been
discovered by a man named Joseph Smith. They practice polygamy, as in
patriarchal times. They are already stirring up opposition to
themselves, for where every one is so good and in his own peculiar way,
hostility must result. And in this Democracy, so-called, all the really
good people are in the business of forcing others to their own way of
thinking. I must tell you also of a branch of the Presbyterian church
which separated from the old church on the question of predestination
and infant damnation. Of Baptists, Methodists, and others there are
numerous sects, which in England would be frowned upon as various forms
of ludicrous non-conformism. De Tocqueville's book, for which my thanks
to you, dear grandmama, will preserve a very faithful picture of America
of this day.

"And it is refreshing, strengthening to the mind and clearing to the
eye, to see Douglas and to hear him talk about all these things. He
stands so clear, so pure of stock so to speak, amid all this variegated
growth of political and social heresy. The other day when I was in
Springfield I looked him up. Here he was talking of the Lovejoy matter,
which led him into a cataloguing of the abolitionists, the anti-Masons,
the Spiritualists, the Mormons, free lovers, old centralists, with the
Whigs. I think he is proud that he has no hobby in the way of an ideal
or ism. He seems unmagnetic to all such things. If he does not look with
suspicion upon the reformer and accuse him of masking some selfish
purpose, he is likely to think that the reformer is something of a fool.
He gazes with an eagle's eye over the whole of American activity; he
sees the South interested in cotton, the North concerned with its
growing factories. Steam, iron, coal, and land figure in his deductions.
He sees the country rising to power on them. And he sees men--whatever
their professions--trying to advance their own interests. Hence he
laughs down these queer political and religious groups; a