University of Virginia Library

9. IX.
GREAT SALT LAKE CITY.

How was I to be greeted by the Mormons? That
was rather an exciting question with me. I had been
told on the plains that a certain humorous sketch of
mine (written some years before) had greatly incensed
the Saints, and a copy of the Sacramento Union
newspaper had a few days before fallen into my hands
in which a Salt Lake correspondent quite clearly intimated
that my reception at the new Zion might
be unpleasantly warm. I ate my dinner moodily
and sent out for some cigars. The venerable clerk
brought me six. They cost only two dollars. They
were procured at a store near by. The Salt Lake
House sells neither cigars nor liquors.

I smoke in my room, having no heart to mingle
with the people in the office.

Dr. Hingston “thanks God he never wrote against
he Mormons,” and goes out in search of a brother
Englishman. Comes back at night and says there

is a prejudice against me. Advises me to keep in.
Has heard that the Mormons thirst for my blood and
are on the look-out for me.

Under these circumstances I keep in.

The next day is Sunday, and we go to the Tabernacle,
in the morning. The Tabernacle is located
on —— street, and is a long rakish building of
adobe, capable of seating some twenty-five hundred
persons. There is a wide platform and a rather
large pulpit at one end of the building, and at the
other end is another platform for the choir. A
young Irishman of the name of Sloan preaches a
sensible sort of discourse, to which a Presbyterian
could hardly have objected. Last night this same
Mr. Sloan enacted a character in a rollicking Irish
farce at the theatre! And he played it well, I was
told; not so well, of course, as the great Dan Bryant
could: but I fancy he was more at home in the Mormon
pulpit than Daniel would have been.

The Mormons, by the way, are preëminently an
amusement-loving people, and the Elders pray for
the success of their theatre with as much earnestness
as they pray for anything else. The congregation

doesn't startle us. It is known, I fancy, that the
heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and
the attendance is slim. There are no ravishingly
beautiful women present, and no positively ugly
ones. The men are fair to middling. They will
never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor
shut up in jail for their homeliness.

There are some good voices in the choir to-day,
but the orchestral accompaniment is unusually
slight. Sometimes they introduce a full brass and
string band in Church. Brigham Young says the
devil has monopolized the good music long enough,
and it is high time the Lord had a portion of it.
Therefore trombones are tooted on Sundays in Utah
as well as on other days; and there are some splendid
musicians there. The orchestra in Brigham
Young's theatre is quite equal to any in Broadway.
There is a youth in Salt Lake City (I forget his
name) who plays the cornet like a North American
angel.

Mr. Stenhouse relieves me of any anxiety I had
felt in regard to having my swan-like throat cut by
the Danites, but thinks my wholesale denunciation

of a people I had never seen was rather hasty.
The following is the paragraph to which the Saints
objected. It occurs in an “Artemus Ward” paper
on Brigham Young, written some years ago:

“I girded up my Lions and fled the Seen. I
packt up my duds and left Salt Lake, which is a 2nd
Soddum and Germorer, inhabited by as theavin' &
onprincipled a set of retchis as ever drew Breth in
eny spot on the Globe.”

I had forgotten all about this, and as Elder Stenhouse
read it to me “my feelings may be better
imagined than described,” to use language I think
I have heard before. I pleaded, however, that it
was a purely burlesque sketch, and that this strong
paragraph should not be interpreted literally at all.
The Elder didn't seem to see it in that light, but we
parted pleasantly.