city stands the United States
garrison of infantry and artillery. The State of Utah can do nearly
anything it pleases until that much-to-be-desired hour when the Gentile
vote shall quietly swamp out Mormonism; but the garrison is kept there
in case of accidents. The big, shark-mouthed, pig-eared, heavy-boned
farmers sometimes take to their creed with wildest fanaticism, and in
past years have made life excessively unpleasant for the Gentile when he
was few in the land. But to-day, so far from killing openly or secretly,
or burning Gentile farms, it is all the Mormon dares do to feebly try to
boycott the interloper. His journals preach defiance to the United
States Government, and in the Tabernacle of a Sunday the preachers
follow suit. When I went down there the place was full of people who
would have been much better for a washing. A man rose up and told them
that they were the chosen of God, the elect of Israel, that they were to
obey their priest, and that there was a good time coming. I fancy that
they had heard all this before so many times it produced no impression
whatever; even as the sublimest mysteries of another Faith lost salt
through constant iteration. They breathed heavily through their noses
and stared straight in front of them--impassive as flatfish.

And that evening I went up to the garrison post--one of the most coveted
of all the army commands--and overlooked the City of the Saints as it
lay in the circle of its forbidding hills. You can speculate a good deal
about the mass of human misery, the loves frustrated, the gentle hearts
broken, and the strong souls twisted from the law of life to a fiercer
following of the law of death, that the hills have seen. How must it
have been in the old days when the footsore emigrants broke through into
the circle and knew that they were cut off from hope of return or sight
of friends--were handed over to the power of the friends that called
themselves priests of the Most High? "But for the grace of God there
goes Richard Baxter," as the eminent divine once said. It seemed good
that fate did not order me to be a brick in the up-building of the
Mormon church, that has so aptly established herself by the borders of a
lake bitter, salt, and hopeless.

No. XXXIII

HOW I MET CERTAIN PEOPLE OF IMPORTANCE BETWEEN SALT LAKE AND OMAHA.

"Much have I seen,
Cities and men."

Let there be no misunderstanding about the matter. I love this People,
and if