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CHAPTER XV
IT is a luscious country for
thrilling evening stories about assassinations of
intractable Gentiles. I cannot easily conceive of anything
more cosy than the night in Salt Lake which we spent in a
Gentile den, smoking pipes and listening to tales of how
Burton galloped in among the pleading and defenceless
"Morisites" and shot them down, men and women, like so many
dogs. And how Bill Hickman, a Destroying Angel, shot Drown
and Arnold dead for bringing suit against him for a debt.
And how Porter Rockwell did this and that dreadful thing.
And how heedless people often come to Utah and make remarks
about Brigham, or polygamy, or some other sacred matter,
and the very next morning at daylight such parties are sure
to be found lying up some back alley, contentedly waiting
for the hearse.
And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen
to these Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly
old frog of an elder, or a bishop, marries a girl--likes
her, marries her sister--likes her, marries another
sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries her
mother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great
grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more.
And how the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be
the favorite wife and her own venerable grandmother have to
rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's esteem,
and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how
this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one
foul nest of mother and daughters, and the making a young
daughter superior to her own mother in rank and authority,
are things which Mormon women submit to because their
religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on
earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place
they will all have in the world to come--and the warmer,
maybe, though they do not seem to say anything about
that.
According to these Gentile friends of ours, Brigham
Young's harem contains twenty or thirty wives. They said
that some of them had grown old and gone out of active
service, but were comfortably housed and cared for in the
henery--or the Lion House, as it is strangely named. Along
with each wife were her children--fifty altogether. The
house was perfectly quiet and orderly, when the children
were still. They all took their meals in one room, and a
happy and home-like sight it was pronounced to be. None of
our party got an opportunity to take dinner with Mr. Young,
but a Gentile by the name of Johnson professed to have
enjoyed a sociable breakfast in the Lion House. He gave a
preposterous account of the "calling of the roll," and
other preliminaries, and the carnage that ensued when the
buckwheat cakes came in. But he embellished rather too
much. He said that Mr. Young told him several smart sayings
of certain of his "two-year-olds," observing with some
pride that for many years he had been the heaviest
contributor in that line to one of the Eastern magazines;
and then he wanted to show Mr. Johnson one of the pets that
had said the last good thing, but he could not find the
child. He searched the faces of the children in detail, but
could not decide which one it was. Finally he gave it up
with a sigh and said:
"I thought I would know the little cub again but I
don't." Mr. Johnson said further, that Mr. Young observed
that life was a sad, sad thing--"because the joy of every
new marriage a man contracted was so apt to be blighted by
the inopportune funeral of a less recent bride." And Mr.
Johnson said that while he and Mr. Young were pleasantly
conversing in private, one of the Mrs. Youngs came in and
demanded a breast-pin, remarking that she had found out
that he had been giving a breast-pin to No. 6, and
she, for one, did not propose to let this partiality
go on without making a satisfactory amount of trouble about
it. Mr. Young reminded her that there was a stranger
present. Mrs. Young said that if the state of things inside
the house was not agreeable to the stranger, he could find
room outside. Mr. Young promised the breast-pin, and she
went away. But in a minute or two another Mrs. Young came
in and demanded a breast-pin. Mr. Young began a
remonstrance, but Mrs. Young cut him short. She said No. 6
had got one, and No. 11 was promised one, and it was "no
use for him to try to impose on her--she hoped she knew her
rights." He gave his promise, and she went. And presently
three Mrs. Youngs entered in a body and opened on their
husband a tempest of tears, abuse, and entreaty. They had
heard all about No. 6, No. 11, and No. 14. Three more
breast-pins were promised. They were hardly gone when nine
more Mrs. Youngs filed into the presence, and a new tempest
burst forth and raged round about the prophet and his
guest. Nine breast-pins were promised, and the weird
sisters filed out again. And in came eleven more, weeping
and wailing and gnashing their teeth. Eleven promised
breast-pins purchased peace once more.
"That is a specimen," said Mr. Young. "You see how it
is. You see what a life I lead. A man can't be wise
all the time. In a heedless moment I gave my darling No.
6--excuse my calling her thus, as her other name has
escaped me for the moment--a breast-pin. It was only worth
twenty-five dollars--that is, apparently that was
its whole cost--but its ultimate cost was inevitably bound
to be a good deal more. You yourself have seen it climb up
to six hundred and fifty dollars--and alas, even that is
not the end! For I have wives all over this Territory of
Utah. I have dozens of wives whose numbers, even, I
do not know without looking in the family Bible. They are
scattered far and wide among the mountains and valleys of
my realm. And mark you, every solitary one of them will
hear of this wretched breast pin, and every last one of
them will have one or die. No. 6's breast pin will cost me
twenty-five hundred dollars before I see the end of it. And
these creatures will compare these pins together, and if
one is a shade finer than the rest, they will all be thrown
on my hands, and I will have to order a new lot to keep
peace in the family. Sir, you probably did not know it, but
all the time you were present with my children your every
movement was watched by vigilant servitors of mine. If you
had offered to give a child a dime, or a stick of candy, or
any trifle of the kind, you would have been snatched out of
the house instantly, provided it could be done before your
gift left your hand. Otherwise it would be absolutely
necessary for you to make an exactly similar gift to all my
children--and knowing by experience the importance of the
thing, I would have stood by and seen to it myself that you
did it, and did it thoroughly. Once a gentleman gave one of
my children a tin whistle--a veritable invention of Satan,
sir, and one which I have an unspeakable horror of, and so
would you if you had eighty or ninety children in your
house. But the deed was done--the man escaped. I knew what
the result was going to be, and I thirsted for vengeance. I
ordered out a flock of Destroying Angels, and they hunted
the man far into the fastnesses of the Nevada mountains.
But they never caught him. I am not cruel, sir--I am not
vindictive except when sorely outraged--but if I had caught
him, sir, so help me Joseph Smith, I would have locked him
into the nursery till the brats whistled him to death. By
the slaughtered body of St. Parley Pratt (whom God assoil!)
there was never anything on this earth like it! I
knew who gave the whistle to the child, but I could, not
make those jealous mothers believe me. They believed
I did it, and the result was just what any man of
reflection could have foreseen: I had to order a hundred
and ten whistles--I think we had a hundred and ten children
in the house then, but some of them are off at college
now--I had to order a hundred and ten of those shrieking
things, and I wish I may never speak another word if we
didn't have to talk on our fingers entirely, from that time
forth until the children got tired of the whistles. And if
ever another man gives a whistle to a child of mine and I
get my hands on him, I will hang him higher than Haman!
That is the word with the bark on it! Shade of Nephi!
You don't know anything about married life. I am
rich, and everybody knows it. I am benevolent, and
everybody takes advantage of it. I have a strong fatherly
instinct and all the foundlings are foisted on me. Every
time a woman wants to do well by her darling, she puzzles
her brain to cipher out some scheme for getting it into my
hands. Why, sir, a woman came here once with a child of a
curious lifeless sort of complexion (and so had the woman),
and swore that the child was mine and she my wife--that I
had married her at such-and-such a time in such-and-such a
place, but she had forgotten her number, and of course I
could not remember her name. Well, sir, she called my
attention to the fact that the child looked like me, and
really it did seem to resemble me--a common thing in the
Territory--and, to cut the story short, I put it in my
nursery, and she left. And by the ghost of Orson Hyde, when
they came to wash the paint off that child it was an
Injun!
Bless my soul, you don't know anything about married
life. It is a perfect dog's life, sir--a perfect dog's
life. You can't economize. It isn't possible. I have tried
keeping one set of bridal attire for all occasions. But it
is of no use. First you'll marry a combination of calico
and consumption that's as thin as a rail, and next you'll
get a creature that's nothing more than the dropsy in
disguise, and then you've got to eke out that bridal dress
with an old balloon. That is the way it goes. And think of
the wash-bill--(excuse these tears)--nine hundred and
eighty-four pieces a week! No, sir, there is no such a
thing as economy in a family like mine. Why, just the one
item of cradles--think of it! And vermifuge! Soothing
syrup! Teething rings! And `papa's watches' for the babies
to play with! And things to scratch the furniture with! And
lucifer matches for them to eat, and pieces of glass to cut
themselves with! The item of glass alone would support
your family, I venture to say, sir. Let me scrimp
and squeeze all I can, I still can't get ahead as fast as I
feel I ought to, with my opportunities. Bless you, sir, at
a time when I had seventy-two wives in this house, I
groaned under the pressure of keeping thousands of dollars
tied up in seventy-two bedsteads when the money ought to
have been out at interest; and I just sold out the whole
stock, sir, at a sacrifice, and built a bedstead seven feet
long and ninety-six feet wide. But it was a failure, sir. I
could not sleep. It appeared to me that the whole
seventy-two women snored at once. The roar was deafening.
And then the danger of it! That was what I was looking at.
They would all draw in their breath at once, and you could
actually see the walls of the house suck in--and then they
would all exhale their breath at once, and you could see
the walls swell out, and strain, and hear the rafters
crack, and the shingles grind together. My friend, take an
old man's advice, and don't encumber yourself with a
large family--mind, I tell you, don't do it. In a small
family, and in a small family only, you will find that
comfort and that peace of mind which are the best at last
of the blessings this world is able to afford us, and for
the lack of which no accumulation of wealth, and no
acquisition of fame, power, and greatness can ever
compensate us. Take my word for it, ten or eleven wives is
all you need--never go over it."
Some instinct or other made me set this Johnson down as
being unreliable. And yet he was a very entertaining
person, and I doubt if some of the information he gave us
could have been acquired from any other source. He was a
pleasant contrast to those reticent Mormons.
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