with some friend; the other is given up to the
girls who have to play during the night, but who
are not engaged in the immediate business of the
piece. As a rule, every one s pleasure is con-
THE MORMON THEATRE. 201
sidered in this model playhouse ; and I can
answer, on the part of Miss Adams, Miss Alexander,
and other young artists, that this appropriation
to their sole use of a private box, into which they
can run at all times, in any dress, without being
seen, is considered by them as a very great
comfort.
Through the quick eye and careful hand of his
manager. Hiram Clawson, the President may be con
gratulated on having made his playhouse into some
thing coming near to that which he conceives a play
house should be. Everything in front of the foot
lights is in keeping ; peace and order reign in the
midst of fun and frolic. Neither within the doors
nor about them, do you find the riot of our own
Lyceum and Drury Lane ; no loose women, no
pickpockets, no ragged boys and girls, no drunken
and blaspheming men. As a Mormon never
drinks spirits, and rarely smokes tobacco, the only
dissipation in which you find these hundreds of
hearty creatures indulging their appetites, is that
of sucking a peach. Short plays are in vogue
in this theatre, just as short sermons are the rule
in yon tabernacle. The curtain, which rises at
eight, comes down about half-past ten ; and as
the Mormon fashion is for people to sup before
202 NEW AMERICA.
going out, they retire to rest the moment they
get home, never suffering their amusements to
infringe on the labours of the coming day. Your
bell rings for breakfast at six o clock.
But the chief beauties of this model playhouse
lie behind the scenes ; in the ample space, the
perfect light, the scrupulous cleanliness of every
part. I am pretty well acquainted with green
rooms and side wings in Europe ; but I have
never seen, not in Italian and Austrian theatres,
so many delicate arrangements for the privacy
and comfort of ladies and gentlemen as at Salt
Lake. The green-room is a real drawing-room.
The scene-painters have their proper studios ; the
dressers and decorators have immense magazines.
Every lady, however small her part in the play,
has a dressing-room to herself.
Young understands that the true work of re
form in a playhouse must begin behind the scenes :
that you must elevate the actor before you can
purify the stage. To this end, he not only builds
dressing-rooms and a private box for the ladies
who have to act, but he places his daughters on
the stage as an example and encouragement to
others. Three of these young sultanas, Alice,
Emily, and Zina, are on the stage. With Alice,
THE MOEMON THEATKE. 203
the youngest wife of Elder Clawson, I have
had the honour to make an acquaintance, which
might be called a friendship, and from her lips
I have learned a good deal as to her father s ideas
about stage reform. " I am not myself very fond
of playing," she said to me one day as we sat at
dinner not in these words, perhaps, but to this
effect " but my father desires that my sisters
and myself should act sometimes, as he does not
think it right to ask any poor man s child to do
anything which his own children would object to
do." Her dislike to playing, as she afterwards
told me, arose from a feeling that Nature had
given her no abilities for acting well ; she was
fond of going to see a good piece, and seldom
omitted being present when she had not to play.
Brigham Young has to create, as well as to reform,
the stage of Salt Lake City ; and the chief trouble
of a manager who is seven hundred miles from
the next theatre, must always be with his artists.
Talent for the work does not grow in every field,
like a sunflower and a peach-tree ; it must be
sought for in nooks and corners ; now in a shoe-
shop, anon in a dairy, then in a counting-house ;
but wherever the talent may be found, Young
cannot think of asking any young girl to do a
204 NEW AMERICA.
thing which it is supposed that a daughter of his
own would scorn.
In New York, in St. Louis, in Chicago, nobody
would assert that the stage is a school of virtue,
that acting is a profession which a sober man would
like his daughters to adopt. Young does not
blind himself to the fact that in claiming the
theatre as a school of morals, he has to fight
against a social judgment. An odour of vice, as
of a poisonous weed, infects the air of a playhouse
everywhere ; though nowhere less offensively than
in American towns. Against this evil, much of it
the consequence of bad traditions, he offers up, as
it were, a part of himself his children ; the only
persons in Salt Lake City who could really do this
cleansing work. In this way, Alice and Zina may
be regarded as two priestly virgins who have been
placed on the public stage to purify it by their
presence from an ancient but unnecessary stain.
Young, and his agent Clawson, are bestowing
much care upon the education of Miss Adams, a
young lady who has everything to learn except
the art of being lovely; also upon that of Miss
Alexander, a girl who, besides being pretty and
piquant, has genuine ability for her work. A
story, which shows that Young has a feeling for
BRIGHAM YOUNG.
THE MORMON THEATRE. 205
humour, has been told me, of which Miss Alex
ander is the heroine. A starring actor from San
Francisco fell into desperate love for her, and went
up to the President s house for leave to address
her. " Ha ! my good fellow," said the Prophet ;
" I have seen you play Hamlet very well, and
Julius Ca3sar pretty well, but you must not
aspire to Alexander ! "
We saw Brigham Young for the first time in
his private box. A large head, broad, fair face,
with blue eyes, light brown hair, good nose, and
merry mouth ; a man, plainly dressed, in black
coat and pantaloons, white waistcoat and cravat,
gold studs and sleeve-links, English in build and
looks, but English of the middle class and of a
provincial town; such was the Mormon prophet,
pope, and king, as we first saw him in the theatre
among his people. A lady, one of his wives,
whom we afterwards came to know as Amelia,
sat with him in the box ; she, too, was dressed
in a quiet English style ; and now and then she
eyed the audience from behind her curtain,
through an opera-glass, as English ladies are apt
to do at home. She was pretty, and appeared to
us then rather pensive and poetical.
The pit was almost filled with girls ; on many
206 NEW AMEEICA.
benches sat a dozen damsels in a row ; children
of Kimball, Cannon, Smith, and Wells ; in some
places twenty or thirty girls were grouped to
gether. Young, as he told me himself, has forty-
eight living children, some of whom are grown
up and married ; and, since he sets the fashion
of attending this theatre among his people, it is
only right that he should encourage his children
to appear, both before the foot-lights and behind
them. Alice is the young lady married to Clawson.
Zina, whom we have seen play Mrs. Musket in
the farce of "My Husband s Ghost," is a lady
like girl, tall, full in figure, moon-faced (as the
Orientals say), not much of an artist. Emily we
have also seen ; Elder Clawson is said to be court
ing her. I am told that the flame is mutual ; and
that Emily is not unlikely to be gathered home
to her sister Alice. Gentile rumour fond of
toying with the domestic secrets of the Presi
dent s family says that Alice is not happy with
her lord ; but this is one of those Gentile rumours
which I can almost swear is false. One day, last
week, I had the pleasure of taking Sister Alice
down to dinner, of talking with her for a long
evening, and of seeing and romping with her four
brave boys. A brighter, merrier woman, I have
THE MORMOX THEATRE. 207
rarely seen ; and I noted, as a peculiarity in her,
not common in either eastern or western America,
that she always addressed her husband by his
baptismal name of Hiram. American ladies almost
everywhere speak to their husbands as Mr. Jones
and Mr. Smith, not as William and George. The
perils of a double alliance with the Mormon
pope are said to be great ; envy among the elders,
collision with the Gentiles, jealousy at Camp
Douglas, hostility in Washington ; but Elder
Clawson is said to be ready to take his chance
with Sister Emily, as he has done with Alice,
answering, as the Mormons put it, Washington
theories by Deseret facts.
The first piece we saw was " Charles the Twelfth."
Where Adam Brock warns his daughter, Eudiga,
against military sparks, the whole pit of young
ladies crackled off into girlish laughter ; the
reference being taken to Camp Douglas and the
United States officers stationed there, many of
whom were in the house, and heartily enjoyed
the fun. This play happens to be full of allusions
to soldiers and their amours, and every word of
these allusions was appropriated and applied by
the Saints to their local politics. The interference
of these United States officers and soldiers with
VOL. I. *0 3
208 NEW AMERICA.
the Mormon women is a very sore point with the
Saints, some of their wives having, it is said, been
seduced and carried off. Young spoke to me
with indignation of such proceedings, though he
did not name the offenders as connected with the
camp. " They cause us trouble," he said ; " they
intrude into our affairs, and even into our fami
lies ; we cannot stand such things ; and when
they are guilty we make them bite the dust."
I thought of all that I had ever heard about
Porter Eockwell and his "Danite band ; but I
only smiled and waited for the President to go
on. He quickly added, " I never had any trouble
of this sort in my own family."
When Charles the Twelfth referred to the
amours of his officers, it was good fun to see the
Prophet rolling back in his chair, convulsed with
merriment, while the more staid Amelia eyed the
audience through her opera-glass.
209
CHAPTEE XVIII.
THE TEMPLE.
WHAT the Theatre is to the social life of this
people, the Temple is to its religious life. One
symbolises the enjoyment of the present world,
the other typifies the glories of a world to come.
The playhouse has been raised and opened because
its service is concerned with the things which can
not wait ; the Temple is proceeding slowly, block
being piled on block with the care and leisure of a
work designed to last for ever.
These Mormons profess to have so much re
ligion in their blood and bone, that they can
easily dispense, on occasion, with religious forms.
A few days ago, I happened to hear the first
discourse of Brigham Young to a band of emi
grants ; the practical character of which would
have taken me by surprise, but that my previous
intercourse with him had in some degree prepared
me for it.
VOL. i. p
210 NEW AMERICA.
" Brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus
Christ," he said, in substance, " you have been
chosen from the world by God, and sent through
His grace into this valley of the mountains, to
help in building up His kingdom. You are faint
and weary from your march. Eest, then, for a
day, for a second day, should you need it ; then
rise up, and see how you will live. Don t bother
yourselves much about your religious duties ; you
have been chosen for this work, and God will
take care of you in it. Be of good cheer. Look
about this valley into which you have been called.
Your first duty is to learn how to grow a cabbage,
and along with this cabbage an onion, a tomato,
a sweet potato ; then how to feed a pig, to
build a house, to plant a garden, to rear cattle,
and to bake bread ; in one word, your first duty
is to live. The next duty for those who, being
Danes, French, and Swiss, cannot speak it now
is to learn English ; the language of God, the
language of the Book of Mormon, the language
of these Latter Days. These things you must do
first ; the rest will be added to you in proper
seasons. God bless you ; and the peace of our Lord
Jesus Christ be with you."
The Temple is not forgotten ; in fact, no people
THE TEMPLE. 211
on the earth devote more money to their religious
edifices and services than the Mormons. A tenth
of all produce often much more is cheerfully
given up to the church ; but the first thought of
a convert, the first counsel of an elder, is always,
that the Saint shall look upon labour, labour of
the hand and brain, and most of all labour of the
hand, as the appointed sacrifice through which,
by God s own law, a man shall be purged from
sin and shall attain everlasting peace. All the
passions which another sect throws into polemics,
the Mormons put into work. They do not shun
discussion by the tongue ; in fact, they are shrewd
of wit, prompt in quotation ; but they prefer that
their chief controversies with the world should be
conducted by the spade.
Hence they thrive where no other men could
live. Those engineers who reported that a hun
dred settlers could never find sustenance in these
valleys, were not so much in the wrong as many
people, wise after Young s success, suppose. Even
Bridger, the old Wasatch trapper, when he offered
to give a thousand dollars for every ear of corn to
; be raised in this valley, was not such a fool as his
words may now seem to make him. Those critics
only spoke of what might have been expected from
212 NEW AMEKICA.
ordinary men, impelled by ordinary motives; and
nothing on earth is surer than that ordinary men
would have perished in these regions. The soil
is so dry, so barren, that with all his passion
for work, a Mormon can only cultivate four acres
of land, while a Gentile on the Missouri and the
Kansas rivers can easily cultivate forty acres.
Take away the Mormon impetus, and in two years
this city of Salt Lake would come to depend, as
Denver does, on Indiana and Ohio for its supplies
of food.
Who, then, are these working Saints engaged
in building this Temple ?
Thirty-six years ago, there were six Mormons
in America ; none in England, none in the rest of
Europe ; and to-day (1866) they have twenty
thousand Saints in Salt Lake city ; four thousand
each in Ogden, Provo, and Logan ; in the whole of
their stations in these valleys (one hundred and six
settlements, properly organized by them, and ruled
by bishops and elders), a hundred and fifty thou
sand souls ; in other parts of the United States,
about eight or ten thousand; in England and its
dependencies, about fifteen thousand; in the rest
of Europe, ten thousand; in Asia and the South
Sea Islands, about twenty thousand ; in all not
THE TEMPLE. 213
less, perhaps, than two hundred thousand followers
of the gospel preached by Joseph Smith. All these
converts have been gathered into this Temple in
thirty years.
This power of growth a power developed in
the midst of persecution is one of the strangest
facts in the story of this strange people. In half
the span of our life they have risen from nothing
into a vast and vital church. Islam, preaching
the Unity of God with fire and sword, swept
onward with a slower inarch than these American
Saints ; for in little more than thirty years they
have won a nation from the Christian church ;
they have occupied a territory larger than Spain ;
they have built a capital in the desert, which is
already more populous than Valladolid ; they have
1 rilled an army which I have reason to believe is
more than twenty thousand strong ; they have
;iised a priesthood, counting in its ranks many
hundreds of working prophets, presidents, bishops,
Councillors, and elders ; they have established a
law, a theology, a social science, of their own,
>rofoundly hostile to all reigning colleges and
roods.
Counting them man by man, the Saints are
ilready strong ; but the returns which are made
214 NEW AMERICA.
on paper (so frequently beyond the mark in both
churches and armies) stand in their case far be
low their actual strength, whether we weigh them
in the scale of either temporal or spiritual power.
Other men may be counted by heads ; these men
must be counted by heads and hearts ; for every
saint is at once a priest and a soldier ; the whole
Mormon population being trained alike to con
troversies of the spirit and of the flesh. Every
male adult has a thought in his brain, a revolver
in his belt, a rifle in his hand. In every house we
find arms ; in the Prophet s chamber, in the news
paper office, in the emigrants shed, in the bath
house, in the common parlour, in the ordinary
sleeping-room. On our first arrival at Salt Lake
city, the hotel, kept by Colonel Little, a leading
Mormon, was full of guests, and a small dog-hole,
without a chair, a table, a wardrobe, and with
only one camp-bed in it, was offered us by a
hasty negro for our quarters. Letters of intro
duction, instantly delivered, brought friends to our
help ; but the place was so crammed with visitors
that no room could be made or got, and my friend
was obliged to accept Colonel Little s hospitalities
at his private house. There he found one of the
Colonel s wives reading to her group of pretty
THE TEMPLE. 215
girls a book in favour of polygamy ; and on being
shown into a bed-room for the night (a bed-room
belonging to one of Colonel Little s sons), he was
<tartled on finding a loaded pistol under his
pillow, two Colt s revolvers loaded and capped,
slung on the wall ; in a corner of the room two
Ha Hard rifles. Young Little, whose room my
friend was occupying for the night, is a lad of
seventeen.
At first these Saints were a pacific race, war
ring with the sword of faith only ; but when the
Gentile spoiler came down upon them, using steel
and lead against what they called truth, and when
it appeared that the law, appealed to in their
-tress of mind and body, could give them no help,
hey Liirt upon their loins a more carnal weapon.
They bought swords and guns, formed themselves
into bands, fell steadily to drill, and in a few
i Months they had become more formidable in Iowa
and Illinois than their weak numbers could have
made them. If they were not strong enough to
found a new empire on the Mississippi in defiance
of public opinion, they were powerful enough to
disturb the adjoining States; and when the Mexi-
an war broke out, to send a brilliant corps to the
at of war. From that day to our own, the
216 NEW AMERICA.
martial exercises of the Saints have known no
pause. Drill may now be considered as part of
the Mormon ritual ; a Saint being as much bound
to appear on parade as he is in the tabernacle. It
is scarcely a figure of speech to say that every
male adult of Deseret as the Mormons call Utah
holds himself equally ready to start on a mission
and to take the field. It is their boast, and I
believe not a vain one, that in fifteen minutes they
can rally three thousand rifles, each rifle backed by
a revolver, around their City hall. Once, on a
false alarm being raised, this body of men was
actually under arms.
These Temple builders call themselves Saints,
accept the Bible as true, baptize their converts in
the name of Christ ; but they are not a Christian
people, and no church in the world could hold
communion with them in their present state. In
truth, they approach much nearer both in creed,
in morals, and in government, to the Utes and
Shoshones than to any Anglo - Saxon church.
Young gets a meaning from the Bible which no one
else ever found there. It has been often said that
the Saints pretend to have a new translation of thej
Bible ; a rendering made by the Holy Spirit ; but
Brigham Young tells me that this statement L<
THE TEMPLE. 217
untrue. He claims to understand the Scriptures by
a purer light than we Gentiles now possess, and to
have the hidden meaning of certain portions of them
cleared by Divine revelation ; but he takes our Bible
as it stands in the authorized English version.
" King James Bible," he said to me with emphasis,
" is my Bible ; I know of none other." In fact,
he seems to regard that version as in some sort
divine, and the very language in which it is
couched as in some sort sacred. " The English
tongue," he said, " is a holy form of speech ; the
best, the softest, and the strongest language in
the world." I think he considers it the language
,of God and of heaven. " It is holy," he said, " for
it is the speech in which the angels wrote the
iBook of Mormon, the speech in which God has
. given his last revelation to man." When a friend
of mine went into a Salt Lake city book-store,
and asked for the Mormon book of faith, the
iman behind the counter handed him an English
Bible. " We have no better book," he said ; " all
that we believe you will find in those pages."
This is what they always say ; but it is no less
true that they find a thousand facts and doctrines
in their Bible which we have never found in ours ;
a new history of the creation, of the fall, of the
218 NEW AMERICA.
atonement, of the future life. In fact, they have
made for themselves a new heaven and a new
earth.
A Mohammedan mosque stands nearer to a
Christian church than this Mormon temple stands.
Islam broke down idols, Mormonism sets them
up. Smith and Young have peopled their strange
heaven with gods of their own making ; and the
Almighty is in their eyes but a President of
Heaven, a Chief among spiritual peers, occupying
a throne like that of the Eoman Jove. In short,
this temple is nothing less than the altar of a new
people ; a people having a new law, a new morality,
a new priesthood, a new industry, a new canon, and
a new God.
219
CHAPTER XIX.
THE TWO SEERS.
NOTHING is more easy than to laugh at these vo
taries. They are low people ; scum of the earth,
dregs of great cities, mire of the roadside, ooze of
the river-bank and the ditch. Their prophet was
Joe Smith ; and that story of his about the gold
plates, about the Urim and Thummim, about the
Egyptian mummy, about the Spalding manuscript
novel, about the Sword of Laban, and the angelic
visitors, about the Mormon bank, the paper money,
and the spiritual wife may be so told by a man
of comic vein as to excite shouts of laughter in a
Gentile room. Perhaps the weakest side of the
new church is that of the Prophet s actual life, as
the strongest side is that of his actual death. Had
Smith lived long enough for the facts of his career
-to become known, many persons think that among a
people keenly alive to humour he would have found
no lasting dupes.
220 NEW AMERICA.
Look, say these persons, into that oily, perky
face, and say whether you can dream of any
thing divine lying hid behind it? Smith, having
the true instinct of a sectarian, and knowing
that the seeds of the Church were sown in the
blood of her martyrs, put himself day by day into
the paths of the persecutor. No man is popular
until he has been abused, no man is thought a
saint until he has been calumniated, no man ij
ranked among the prophets until he has been
stoned to death. " Persecution," said Brigham,
" is our portion ; if we are right, the world will
be against us ; but the world will not prevail
against the elect of God." Smith felt in his heart
this truth of truths ; he sought for oppression as
the sign of his calling, and his enemies in the
States indulged him in the dearest wish of his
soul.
Thirty-nine times he was cited into courts of
law. It is strong evidence of his craft that he
contrived to be so often accused without being
once condemned. Every charge made against him
put new heart into his church. Still the growth
of his sect was slow ; slow, compared against that of
George Fox, that of John Wesley, even that of
Ann Lee. Bound Smith s own person there was
THE TWO SEERS. 221
always bickering and division ; many of the Saints
declaring that their seer was robbing the common
till. Eigdon, his partner in the fraud of palming
off Spalding s romance as a translation from the
golden plates, quitted and exposed him. Other
men followed this example ; and though many
new converts were being made at a distance among
people who knew not Joseph in the flesh, the sect
could hardly have been kept together, had it not
pleased the western rowdies to make Smith a
martyr. A gang of ruffians, taking the law into
their hands, broke into his prison at Carthage,
and shot him down like a dog.
A crime, for which no excuse could be found,
infused new spirit into his friends, and opened to
his missionaries the ears of thousands. After the
murder had been committed, justice was too slow
to seize, too weak to punish his assassins ; a fact
which seemed to carry the appeal of blood from
earth to heaven.