17. CHAPTER XVII.
AT the end of our two days' sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake
City hearty and well fed and happy—physically superb but not so
very much wiser, as regards the "Mormon question," than we were
when we arrived, perhaps. We had a deal more "information" than
we had before, of course, but we did not know what portion of it
was reliable and what was not—for it all came from acquaintances
of a day—strangers, strictly speaking. We were told, for instance,
that the dreadful "Mountain Meadows Massacre" was the work of
the Indians entirely, and that the Gentiles had meanly tried to
fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told, likewise, that the
Indians were to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons; and we
were told, likewise, and just as positively, that the Mormons were
almost if not wholly and completely responsible for that most
treacherous and pitiless butchery. We got the story in all these
different shapes, but it was not till several years afterward that
Mrs. Waite's book, "The Mormon Prophet," came out with Judge
Cradlebaugh's trial of the accused parties in it and revealed the
truth that the latter version was the correct one and that the
Mormons were the assassins.
All our "information" had three sides to it, and so I
gave up the idea that I could settle the "Mormon question" in two
days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one.
I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of
things existed there—and sometimes even questioning in my own
mind whether a state of things existed there at all
or not. But presently I remembered with a lightening sense of
relief that we had learned two or three trivial things there which
we could be certain of; and so the two days were not wholly lost.
For instance, we had learned that we were at last in a pioneer land,
in absolute and tangible reality.
The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high
freights and bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in
those days, the smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it
represented the smallest purchasable quantity of any commodity.
West of Cincinnati the smallest coin in use was the silver five-cent
piece and no smaller quantity of an article could be bought than
"five cents' worth." In Overland City the lowest coin appeared to
be the ten-cent piece; but in Salt Lake there did not seem to be any
money in circulation smaller than a quarter, or any smaller
quantity purchasable of any commodity than twenty-five cents'
worth. We had always been used to half dimes and "five cents'
worth" as the minimum of financial negotiations; but in Salt Lake
if one wanted a cigar, it was a quarter; if he wanted a chalk pipe, it
was a
quarter; if he wanted a peach, or a candle, or a newspaper, or a
shave, or a little Gentile whiskey to rub on his corns to arrest
indigestion and keep him from having the toothache, twenty-five
cents was the price, every time. When we looked at the shot-bag
of silver, now and then, we seemed to be wasting our substance in
riotous living, but if we referred to the expense account we could
see that we had not been doing anything of the kind.
But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and
fond and vain of both—it is a descent to little coins and cheap
prices that is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one's
toleration. After a month's acquaintance with the twenty-five cent
minimum, the average human being is ready to blush every time he
thinks of his despicable five-cent days. How sunburnt with
blushes I used to get in gaudy Nevada, every time I thought of my
first financial experience in Salt Lake. It was on this wise (which
is a favorite expression of great authors, and a very neat one, too,
but I never hear anybody
say on
this wise when they are talking). A young half-breed with a
complexion like a yellow-jacket asked me if I would have my
boots blacked. It was at the Salt Lake House the morning after we
arrived. I said yes, and he blacked them. Then I handed him a
silver five-cent piece, with the benevolent air of a person who is
conferring wealth and blessedness upon poverty and suffering.
The yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be suppressed
emotion, and laid it reverently down in the middle of his broad
hand. Then he began to contemplate it, much as a philosopher
contemplates a gnat's ear in the ample field of
his microscope. Several mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers,
etc., drew near and dropped into the tableau and fell to surveying
the money with that attractive indifference to formality which is
noticeable in the hardy pioneer. Presently the yellow-jacket
handed the half dime back to me and told me I ought to keep my
money in my pocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I
wouldn't get it cramped and shriveled up so!
What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the
mongrel reptile on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I
was detaching his scalp, for the remark he
made was good for an "Injun."
Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices
without letting the inward shudder appear on the surface—for even
already we had overheard and noted the tenor of conversations
among drivers, conductors, and hostlers, and finally among
citizens of Salt Lake, until we were well aware that these superior
beings despised "emigrants." We permitted no tell-tale shudders
and winces in our countenances, for we wanted to seem pioneers,
or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters, stage-drivers, Mountain
Meadow assassins—anything in the world that the plains and Utah
respected and admired—but we were wretchedly ashamed of being
"emigrants," and sorry enough that we had white shirts and could
not swear in the presence of ladies without looking the other
way.
And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion
to remember with humiliation that we were "emigrants," and
consequently a low and inferior sort of creatures. Perhaps the
reader has visited Utah, Nevada, or California, even in these latter
days, and while communing with himself upon the sorrowful
banishment of these countries from what he considers "the world,"
has had his wings clipped by finding
that
he is the one
to be pitied, and that there are entire populations around
him ready and willing to do it for him—yea, who are complacently
doing it for him already, wherever he steps his foot.
Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New
York coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his
feeble profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores,
shafts, tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and
never felt enough interest in to read about. And all the time that
he is thinking what a sad fate it is to be exiled to that far country,
that lonely land, the citizens around him are looking down on him
with a blighting compassion because he is an "emigrant" instead of
that proudest and blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a
"FORTY-NINER."
The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight
it almost seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery
among the mail sacks at all. We had made one alteration,
however. We had provided enough bread, boiled ham and hard
boiled eggs to last double the six hundred miles of staging we had
still to do.
And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and
contemplate the majestic panorama of mountains and valleys
spread out below us and eat ham and hard boiled
eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternately in rainbows,
thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenery like
ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe—an old, rank,
delicious pipe—ham and eggs and scenery, a "down grade," a flying
coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart—these make
happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for.