a letter home she says:

Our afternoon meeting of women alone was a sad spectacle. There was
scarcely a sunny, joyous countenance in the whole 300, but a vast
number of deep-lined, careworn, long-suffering faces--more so,
even, than those of our own pioneer farmers' and settlers' wives,
as I have many times looked into them. Their life of dependence on
men is even more dreadful than that of monogamy, for here it is
two, six, a dozen women and their great broods of children each and
all dependent on the one man. Think of fifteen, twenty, thirty
pairs of shoes at one strike, or as many hats and dresses!...

But when I look back into the States, what sorrow, what broken
hearts are there because of husbands taking to themselves new
friendships, just as really wives as are these, and the legal wife
feeling even more wronged and neglected. I have not the least doubt
but the suffering there equals that here--the difference is that
here it is a religious duty for the man to commit the crime against
the first wife, and for her to accept the new-comer into the family
with a cheerful face; while there the wrong is done against law and
public sentiment. But even the most devoted Mormon women say it
takes a great deal of grace to accept the other wives, and be just
as happy when the husband devotes himself to any of them as to
herself, yet the faithful Saint attains to such angelic heights and
finds her glory and the Lord's in so doing. The system of the
subjection of woman here finds its limit, and she touches the
lowest depths of her degradation.

The empire totters and Brigham feels the ground sliding from under
his feet. These men will be very likely to try the "variety" plan
of Stephen Pearl Andrews, but the women will hate that even worse
than polygamy. One man came to me relating a new vision, direct
from Christ himself, to that effect, and I said: "Away with your
man-visions! Women propose to reject them all, and begin to dream
dreams for themselves."

While at Salt Lake they received complimentary passes to California and
throughout that State, from Governor Leland Stanford, always a helpful
friend to woman suffrage. They reached San Francisco July 9, and took
rooms at the Grand Hotel, at that time the best in the city. Their
coming had been heralded by the press and they experienced the royal
Cali