Roughing It by Mark Twain

me, what could an individual do who had not even anything to do with

either making the laws or executing them? He might be a very good

patriarch of a church and preacher in its tabernacle, but something

sterner than religion and moral suasion was needed to handle a hundred

refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors. But what was a man to do?

I thought if Mr. Young could not do anything else, he might probably be

able to give me some advice and a valuable hint or two, and so I went

straight to him and laid the whole case before him. He said very little,

but he showed strong interest all the way through. He examined all the

papers in detail, and whenever there seemed anything like a hitch, either

in the papers or my statement, he would go back and take up the thread

and follow it patiently out to an intelligent and satisfactory result.

Then he made a list of the contractors’ names. Finally he said:

“‘Mr. Street, this is all perfectly plain. These contracts are strictly

and legally drawn, and are duly signed and certified. These men

manifestly entered into them with their eyes open. I see no fault or

flaw anywhere.’

“Then Mr. Young turned to a man waiting at the other end of the room and

said: ‘Take this list of names to So-and-so, and tell him to have these

men here at such-and-such an hour.’

“They were there, to the minute. So was I. Mr. Young asked them a

number of questions, and their answers made my statement good. Then he

said to them:

“‘You signed these contracts and assumed these obligations of your own

free will and accord?’

“‘Yes.’

“‘Then carry them out to the letter, if it makes paupers of you! Go!’

“And they did go, too! They are strung across the deserts now, working

like bees. And I never hear a word out of them.

There is a batch of governors, and judges, and other officials here,

shipped from Washington, and they maintain the semblance of a republican

form of government–but the petrified truth is that Utah is an absolute

monarchy and Brigham Young is king!”

Mr. Street was a fine man, and I believe his story. I knew him well

during several years afterward in San Francisco.

Our stay in Salt Lake City amounted to only two days, and therefore we

had no time to make the customary inquisition into the workings of

polygamy and get up the usual statistics and deductions preparatory to

calling the attention of the nation at large once more to the matter.

I had the will to do it. With the gushing self-sufficiency of youth I

was feverish to plunge in headlong and achieve a great reform here–until

I saw the Mormon women. Then I was touched. My heart was wiser than my

head. It warmed toward these poor, ungainly and pathetically “homely”

creatures, and as I turned to hide the generous moisture in my eyes, I

said, “No–the man that marries one of them has done an act of Christian

charity which entitles him to the kindly applause of mankind, not their

harsh censure–and the man that marries sixty of them has done a deed of

open-handed generosity so sublime that the nations should stand uncovered

in his presence and worship in silence.”

[For a brief sketch of Mormon history, and the noted Mountain Meadow

massacre, see Appendices A and B. ]

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,