Chapter X: Part 10

“I don’t mean to be,” says I. “I sot out in this talk with principles as hefty as I ever hefted in my life, and if I hain’t a good judge of the common heft of principles, nobody ever was. Why,” says I, “the rights and wrongs of my sect has for years been held nearer to my heart than any earthly object, exceptin’ my Josiah. And I can tell you, and tell you plain, that I have laid awake nights a thinkin’ over what my sect has endured a settin’ under that Mormon church. And daytimes I have sot a knittin’ and thought of the agonies of them female wimmen till there wuzn’t a dry eye in my head, and I couldn’t tell for my life whether I was a seamin’ or a knittin’ plain, or what I was a doin’. For of all the sufferin’s my sect has suffered from the hands of man, this doctrine of polygamy is the very crown, the crown of thorns. Other wrongs and woes have spilte earth for her time and agin, but this destroys her hope of heaven. When other sorrows and wrongs broke her heart, killed her, she could still look to the time when she could take the hand of Death, the Healer, and he would lead her into Repose, give her the peace earth had denied her. She could think that all her burdens of sorrows and wrongs would drop from her into the grave; and in that land where all tears are wiped away—that land of eternal beauty—of sweet consolation for the weary—she could find rest. But this last hope of the broken-hearted, your accursed doctrine has destroyed. Your infamous belief teaches that if a woman won’t do wrong, won’t submit to man’s tyrannical will on earth, commit sin for his sake, he won’t let her go to heaven! Good land!” says I, “it makes me sweat to think on’t.” And I wiped my forward on my apron.

Says he: “As it were, you know.”

“No, I don’t know it,” says I warmly. “Nor I never shall know it.”

Says he: “And so forth, and so on.”

He acted embarassed and skairt, and well he might. Why, the abomination of their doctrine is so abominable, that when it is presented to ’em in a eloquent, high-toned way by a woman who talks but little, but that little earnest and deep; when she places it before ’em in the axent she always handles when talkin’ on principle, and with the soarin’, deep look of her spectacles she always uses on them occasions—why, it is enough to skair anybody to death.

But in a moment or so he sort o’ rousted up, and says he:

“If you think so much of female wimmen as you say you do, I should think you would think about what the position of these plural wives would be if polygimy were abolished. What would they be thought of? What would they be?”

Says I, in awful tones: “What be they now?”

“Wall,” says he, “if they should be divorced they wouldn’t be looked upon as they are now.”

“No,” says I, “that is very true; they wouldn’t, not at all, not by me.”

Says he: “They would be looked down upon more.”

Says I, with dignity: “Stoppin’ sinnin’ hadn’t ort to make anybody thought less on,” says I. “That hain’t accordin’ to my creed or my skripter.”

Says he: “If they was divorced their situation would be very painful and humiliatin’.”

Says I, very dryly: “It is now, in my estimation.”

Says he: “Look at the position of the childern of these unions, that would be left fatherless. What a sad scene it would be; helpless infancy made a mark for contumely and sneers; babyhood blamed, scorned.”

Says I: “They wouldn’t be scorned, not by anybody whose scorn would be worth havin’. Nobody but a fool or a luny is in the habit of blamin’ folks for doin’ what they can’t help doin’, and bein’ what they can’t help bein’. Blame the childern! Why, good land!” says I, “I should jest as soon set out and scold a mornin’-glory or a white violet for the looks of the ground they sprung from. God’s own purity is writ in the clear eyes of babyhood, and in the blue heart of them mornin’-glories. Blossoms of light, mornin’-glories, springin’, God knows how or why, out of the black mould, out of darkness and decay. Who could look scoffin’ly or irreverently on ’em, or on them other blossoms of innocence, springin’ as mysteriously from as dark a soil, and touched by the hand of God with as pure and divine a beauty.”

“Unpractical, unpractical female, led away as females ever are by sympathies and views of right and wrong. Oh! thank Heaven! thank Heaven! such dangerous qualities are not incorporated into politics. I should tremble for the nation if it were so.”

And agin he looked fiercely at the stove-hearth.

“Unpractical female, what would become of the childern left, as it were, fatherless?”

Says I: “If the parents of the childern are rich enough, let ’em support ’em; and the poor ones—I know a man who will adopt the hull lot, and be glad of the chance,” says I proudly. “It is a uncle of mine, a uncle I am proud to own. Samuel is his name, and nobility and generosity is his nater.” Says I: “Let these childern and the wimmen, if necessary, be took care of by the government, and let the evil end with this generation.”

“But what would the position of these wimmen be in society; what would they be?”

“What be they _now_?” says I agin. And I snapped out that “now” considerable snappish, for I was gettin’ a good deal wore out with him. Says I: “You seem to think it would be the death-blow to their reputation to stop sinnin’, stop livin’ in wickedness; but there is where you and I differ. I should think as much agin of ’em.”

And says I: “If a evil is a goin’ to stop, it has got to begin to stop sometime, or else it won’t never get stopped. More of these unholy unions have taken place durin’ the past year than ever before in the same length of time. Powerful efforts are bein’ made to strengthen and extend the power of the system. And it must either be stopped, or else go on widening and spreading, and destroying this beautiful new world as it destroyed so many other strong, proud nations that were glorious in the past.” Says I: “Can I set still and see it go on, and can Josiah set still, and other female pardners, and other Josiahs, and not long to lift a hand to turn back this flood of woe and desolation?”

Here Josiah groaned aloud. He had his thoughts there on that lounge, though he lay middlin’ still. His thoughts goared him worse than that stitch did, ten times over. And I felt sorry for him, my feelin’s for him are such; and I brought his name in in a friendly way, just because my love for him was so strong, and I forgive him so.

Says I: “Elder Judas Wart, I won’t take you back to the old Jewish nations, round by Italy, Spain, and other roundabout ways, as I might do, and as some wimmen who are more talkative than I be probable would, and show you all the way the ruins of the nations ruined by this crime of polygimy. But I am a woman who says but little, but that little I mean, and I will merely hold up Turkey before you. And while I am holdin’ up that Turkey, I will merely mention the fact to you, that you and everybody else knows, and that Turkey knows it well, and if it should speak up and own the truth it would say that it was the effects of this system that made it so weak and impotent. Weaker as a nation than our old turkey-gobbler; fur weaker than a hen-turkey. (I make use of the gobbler as a poetical metafor, and would wish to be so understood.)

“Will not America and Josiahs heed these warnin’s?” says I, lookin’ right up at the ceilin’, in a rapped way. “Will they not listen to the voice of doom that rises from the ruins of other nations, glorious and proud and strong in the past, that has crumbled into ashes from the effects of this sin? Will they not,” I went on in a still more rapped, eloquent way, “will they not bend down their ears and hear the wail of warnin’ that seems to float along over the dust of the desert from old Babylon herself, warnin’ to this new, fresh, western world to escape this enervatin’, destroyin’ sin, and escape her doom? Will not America and Josiahs take warnin’ by the fate of these nations? or will they go on in careless merriment and feastin’, unheedin’ those terrible words ‘_mean! mean!_’ writ up in the blue vault above, till it is too late; till the land is given to the enimy; till weakness, ruin, and decay take the septer from Columbia’s tremblin’, shakin’ grasp, and rain over this once strong, lovely land.”

I sithed, I almost wept—I was so fearfully agitated—and says I: “If this threat’nin’ doom that threatens our beloved land is to be averted, if this evil is to be stopped, when is there a better time than the present to stop it in, now,” says I, wipin’ my eyes on my apron, “now, while America has got me to help her?” And agin I sithed, and agin I almost shed tears, and wept.

He see my agitation, and took advantage of it. Says he: “You seem to be tender-hearted, Josiah Allen’s wife, and to have a great affection for the female sect, and yet you don’t seem to think of the hearts that would be wrung by the agony of seperation. Why,” says he, “if they should part with their companions, they would be unhappy.”

Says I, lookin’ out of the open window, fur away over the tree-tops, over the blue lake beyond—and beyond—

My spectacles seemed to look very fur off. They had a very deep and sort o’ soarin’ look to ’em, somewhat happy, and somewhat sorrowful and solemn. And says I:

“I don’t know as there has any law ever been made, in Heaven or on earth, that we had got to be happy. There is a law made that we should do right, should not do evil, but not that we must be happy. Why, some paths we have to foller lead right away from happiness.” And says I, still lookin’ fur off, in that same sort of a solemn, deep way:

“That path always leads to something better, more beautiful, more divine.”

“What can be better than happiness?” says he, in a enquirin’ way.

“Blessedness!” says I. “The two hain’t to be compared no more than a flower growin’ out of earthly soil is to be compared to one springin’ up in the valleys of God. One is lit with earth’s sun, and the other is shinin’ with Heaven’s own light. One is mortal, the other immortal.”

Says he, still follerin’ up his old theme, still tryin’ to head me off in some way:

“Wouldn’t you be sorry for these females, Josiah Allen’s wife?”

Says I firmly: “If they suffered from the wrenchin’ away of old ties, I should be sorry for ’em to that extent that there wouldn’t be a sithe left in my breast, nor a dry eye in my head. At the same time, if they made the sacrifice willin’ly, from a sense of duty, for the ransom of their people, for the deliverance of the land from peril, my very soul would kneel in reverence to them, and they should be honored by all as those who come out of great tribulations.

“But,” says I, in a slower, more thoughtful way, “there is different kinds of tribulations. And you can look at subjects with the sentimental eye of your specks, and then agin you can turn the other eye onto ’em. And in lookin’ through that other eye at ’em, you might possibly see that the married life of these plural wives is wretched—full of jealousies, divisions, and sizms.

“Woman’s love, when it has room to grow, is a tremendous thing to spread itself. But (still lookin’ through that common sense eye of our specks) we would say that the divine plant of love _can’t_ grow so thrifty in one-twentieth part of a man’s heart as it could in a more expanded and roomy place. We would say (still lookin’ through that eye) that it was too cramped a spot—some like growin’ a oak in a bottle. You can make it sprout; but there can’t be so deep roots nor so strong a strength to it, and it wouldn’t take nigh so much of a pull to wrench it up by the roots.

“And so, to foller up the simely, as simelys ort to be follered, we would think that the first wife is the one who would suffer most; she who thought she was marryin’ a hull man, who dwelt for awhile in a hull heart, and whose affections, therefore, had naturally took deep root, and spread themselves. We would say (still lookin’ through that eye of the speck, and still follerin’ up simelys) that she is the one who would be most wrung with agony.”

“Wall,” says Elder Judas Wart, seemin’ly ketchin’ holt of the first argument that presented itself in front of his mind, for truly he didn’t seem to care how crooked his argument was, nor how wobblin’. Says he:

“Sufferin’ is a divine agent to draw souls heavenward.”

“Yes, heaven-sent sufferin’,” says I, “will draw our hearts up nearer to the heavenly home it come from. But when sufferin’ comes up from below, from another place, scented with brimstone, and loaded with iniquity, it will do its best to draw us down to it where it come from.”

“Pain sometimes teaches divine lessons,” says Elder Judas Wart. And I never see a mouth puckered and twisted down into a more hypocritical pucker than hisen was.

Says I: “Don’t you s’pose I know that?” And then I went on awful eloquent, and grew eloquenter and eloquenter all the time for as much as five minutes or more, entirely unbeknown to me, not thinkin’ who was there, or who I was a talkin’ to, or where, or when:

“Don’t I know,” says I, “that no soul has reached its full might, no soul has ever really lived, till it has learned to bless God for the divine ministry of sorrow? Don’t I certainly know that of all God’s angels the one who brings us divinest gifts is the blessed angel of Pain?”

And I went on again, in that fearfully eloquent way of mine, when I get entirely rousted up in eloquence, and know not where I am, or who is hearin’ of me, or why, or which:

“If we bar this angel from our door, resist her gentle voice pleadin’ at our heart, woe be to us; for she can come as a avenger, a destroyer. But if we greet her as indeed a heavenly visitant, believe that God sent her, hold her in our weak arms close to our hearts, she gives us divinest strength.

“Though we turn away, and fear her greeting, we find that the touch of her lips on our burning brow leaves calm. She lays on our throbbing, aching hearts soft hands of peace. Her eyes have a sorry look for us, that make our tears flow, and then we see that those sad, sweet eyes are looking up from earth to where our own, tear-blinded, are fain to follow—up beyond the vail, into that beautiful city where our treasures and our hopes are.

To no other angel has God given the power to so reveal to us the glory and the mystery of life and of death. No other hand but hers has such power to unlock the very doors of heaven and send down into our hearts heaven’s peace and glory. Don’t I know this? don’t I know that in the hour of our bitterest sorrow, our deepest affliction, when the one that made our world lies silent before us, deaf for the first time to our tears and our sorrow; when all the world looks black and desolate, and hatred and envy and malice seem to surround us, and our human strength is gone, and human help is vain; don’t I know that this divine angel of Pain opens the very doors of Heaven, and lets down a perfect flood of glory into our soul—not happiness, but blessedness.

“Yes, the crosses this angel brings us from a lovin’ Father we will bear in God’s name. But,” says I, firmly, “other folks must do as they are a mind to; but I never will, not if I know it, bend my back, and let old Belzebub lay one of his crosses acrost my shoulder-blades. No, I will throw off that cross, and stamp onto it. And this cross of Mormonism is one of hisen, if he ever had one. It is made out of Belzebub’s own timber, nailed together by man’s selfishness and brutality and cruelty, the very worst part of his nature. It is one of the very heaviest crosses ever tackled by wimmen, and bore along by ’em, wet with their blood and sweat and tears. And Samantha will do her best to stamp onto ’em, every one of ’em, and break ’em up into kindlin’-wood, and build fires with ’em to burn up this putryfyin’ crime of polygimy, root and branch; make a cleansin’ blaze of it to try to purify God’s sweet air it has defiled.”

“Oh!” says Elder Judas Wart, with a low deep groan, “oh! how unpractical females always are. Females are carried away by their sympathies and religious feelings and sense of right and duty, making them a most dangerous element in politics, a very striking and unwholesome contrast to the present admirable system of government, if they were ever incorporated into the body politic; in short, if they ever vote. Let us look on the subject in a practical light.”

And I was so beat out by my eloquent emotions (such emotions are beautiful to have by you, but fatiguin’ to handle, as I handle ’em, and I can’t deny it); and bein’ also almost completely out of wind, I sot still, and let him go on.

And he talked, I should judge, well on to a quarter of a hour about Communism, Socialism, its principles, its rise, and progress; and I let him go on, and didn’t hardly say a word, only I would merely throw in little observations occasionally, such as, when he argued that everybody should own the same amount of property, and there should be no rich and no poor.

I merely threw in this question to him: Whether he thought shiftlessness and laziness should have the same reward as industry and frugality?

And when he was a goin’ on about everybody bein’ educated the same so one could not be intellectually superior to the other, I simply asked him whether he thought Nature was a Socialist.

Says he: “Why?”

“Oh!” says I, “I was a thinkin’ if she was one, she didn’t live up to her belief. She didn’t equalize brains and thrift and economy.”

“Wall, as I was a sayin’” says he, “as it were, you know”—

“No,” says I, coldly, “I don’t know it, nor I never did. I know,” says I, lookin’ keen at him, “that some are born almost fools, and keep on so; and some,” says I, with a sort of modest, becomin’ look, “some are very smart.”

He kep’ perfectly still for a minute, or mebby a minute and a ½. he seemed to collect his strength agin, and broke out, in a loud, haughty tone:

“The fault of our old civilization is that property is controlled by the few. How can a man have the same love for his home, for his hearth-stone, if he works the land of some great landed proprietor? In case of war, now, foreign invasion, if each man owned property of his own, if each man was a Mormon, in fact, he would be fighting for his own interest; not for the interest of some great landed lord. He would be fightin’ for his own hearth-stone; the sacred and holy hearth-stone.”

Says I, in reasonable axents: “I hain’t a word to aginst the sacredness of the hearth-stun. I hain’t a word to say aginst the stun. But wouldn’t it be apt to take off a little of the sacredness of the stun to have thirty or forty wimmen a settin’ on it; each claimin’ it as her own stun? Wouldn’t it have to be a pretty large stun, and a pretty firm one, to stand the gusts and whirlwinds of temper that would be raised round it? And to tell the plain truth, Elder Judas Wart, don’t you believe that every man that owned such a stun, and 30 or 40 wimmen a settin’ on it, and childern accordin’ly, don’t you believe that such a man instead of discouragin’ war would do all in his power to welcome and encourage it, so he could go forth into the battle-field, and find a little peace and repose; that is, if he was a gentle, amiable man, who loved quiet?”

He never said one word in answer to this deep argument, he see it was too deep and sound for him to grapple with; but he kep’ right on, and says, thinkin’ mebby it would skair me, says he:

“Our order was founded by Thalos of Chalcedon.”

“Wall,” says I, “Mr. Thalos is a man that I hain’t no acquaintance with,—I, nor Josiah; so I can’t form any opinion what sort of a character he has got, or what for a man he would be to neighbor with.”

Says he, in a still prouder and haughtier way: “Plato believed in it.”

“How do you know?” says I. “He never told me that he did. If he had, I should have argued sound with him.” And says I, lookin’ keen and searchin’ at him:

“Did he tell you that he believed in it?” says I. “You can hear most anything.”

“Why, no,” says he, “he didn’t tell me. He died twenty-two hundred years ago.”

“Wall,” says I, coolly, “I thought you got it by hearsay. I didn’t believe you got it from the old gentleman himself, or from any of his relations. I remember Mr. Plato myself, now. I have heard Thomas J. read about him frequent. A sort of a schoolmaster, I believe—a man that travelled a good deal—and had considerable of a noble mean. If I remember right, I have seen him myself on a bust. But as I was a sayin’, s’posen Mr. Plato did believe in it. Don’t you s’pose that old gentleman had his faults? He was a nice old man, and very smart. His writings are truly beautiful and inspirin’.

“Why some of his dialogues are almost as keen and sensible and flowery as them that have taken place between a certain woman that I won’t mention the name of, and her pardner Josiah. Why, jest the fact that he got sold once for talkin’ so plain in the cause of Right, endeared him to me. And the fact that he didn’t fetch only twenty minnys (and we all know what small fish they be) didn’t make him seem any the less valuable to me. No, not at all so; it wouldn’t, if he hadn’t fetched more than one little chub.

“Them views of his’en, them witherin’ idees aginst tyrany that he was preachin’ to a tyrent, whales couldn’t lug, nor sharks. They was too big and hefty to be bought or sold. But because Mr. Plato was all right in some things, we mustn’t think he was in all. We are apt to think so, and we are apt to think that that because a gulf of a thousand or two years lay between us and a certain person, that it seperates them from all our mortal errors and simplicities.

“But it hain’t so. That old man had other human weaknesses besides writin’ poetry. I persume Miss Plato had to deal real severe with him lots of times, jest as I do with Josiah. I dare persume to say she had hard work to get along with him more’n half the time. And if he believed in Mormonism, he believed in sunthin’ wicked and abominable, and if I had been on intimate terms with him and her, I should have talked to him like a sister, right before her, so she would feel all right about it, and not get oneasy and jealous. I should have talked powerful to him, and if he is the man I take him to be, I could have convinced him in ten minutes, I know I could.”

“Wall,” says he, “bringin’ the history of our church down to Christ’s day: He was a believer in it.”

I riz right up in a awful dignity and power, and I says, in a tone that was fearful to hear, it was so burnin’ indignant:

“You say that agin in my house, if you dare.”

He dassent, my tone was such. He never said a word, but sot kinder scroochin’ and meachin’ on his chair, and I went on, resumin’ my seat agin, knowin’ as I did that my principles was so hefty I had better save myself all the extra weariness that I could. Says I:

“You dare to say that He, the Deliverer of His people from sin and evil—He, the Teacher of all purity, morality, honesty, and all Christian virtues, who came bringin’ peace on earth, good will to men—He, who taught that a man should have one wife, and be tender and constant to her, even as He loved the Church and gave Himself for it—He, whose life was so pure and self-denyin’ and holy that it brought the divine down to the comprehension of the human—the love and purity of God manifest in the flesh—how dare you tell me that He was a Mormon?”

He dassent say it agin. He dast as well die as to say it. I s’pose, in fact I know, from my feelin’s which I was a feelin’, that my mean was awfuler and more majesticker than it had been for years and years.

Says he, “As it were—” and then he stopped short off, seemin’ly to collect his thoughts together, and then he kinder coughed, and begun agin— “And so forth, and so on,” says he. He acted fairly afraid. And I don’t wonder at it a mite. My looks must have been awful, and witherin’ in the extreme.

But finally he says, “We read of this sect in the Bible, anyway. The Essenes was Mormons, or sort o’ Mormony,” says he, glancin’ at me and then at the teakettle, in a sort of a fearful way.

But says I, coldly, “We read in the Bible of droves of swine that was full of evil spirits; and we read in it of lunaticks, and barren fig-trees, and Judas, and the—the David—callin’ him David, as a Methodist and member of the meetin’-house, who does not want to say Satan if she can possibly help it.

“Now,” says I, “you have brought up every commandment of God, and I have preached on ’em, and you find every one of ’em is aginst you—the old law, and the divine new law made manifest in Christ. Now,” says I, coolly, leanin’ back in my chair, full of martyrdom and eloquence and victory and everything, “bring on your next argument, bring it right here, and let me lay holt of it, and vanquish it, and overthrow it”

“Wall,” says he, “I hold that the perfect faith that thousands have in our religion and its founder, is one of the very strongest proofs of its divine origin.”

“I don’t think so,” says I. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, but things don’t always turn out to be what you hoped they was. Now, there is hash, for instance: and in order to enjoy hash, you have got to have perfect confidence in it and its maker. But still you may have that perfect confidence in it, and eat it in faith, believin’ it is good beef and pork, while at the same time there may be ingredients in it that you know not of, such as Skotch snuff, lily white, hairpins, and etcetery. Hash is a great mystery, and often deceivin’ to the partaker, no matter how strong his faith in it may be.

“And I might foller up this strikin’ simely of hash into other eloquent metafors, such as pills, preachin’, wimmen’s complexion, and etcetery. Some is good and true, and some hain’t good and true, but they all find somebody to believe in ’em.

“This is a very deep subject, and solemn, if handled solemnly. I have handled it only in a light parable way, showin’ that them that do honestly believe in this Mormon doctrine, if there are any, are partakin’ (unbeknown to them) of a hash that is full of abomination and uncleanness, full of humiliation, sorrow, and degradation. Oh!” says I, fallin’ back on the side of the subject nearest to my heart, “when I think of the woes of my sect there in Utah, I feel feelin’s that never can be told or sung. No, there never could be a tune made mournful and solemn enough to sing ’em in.”

Says he, bold as brass, and not thinkin’ how he was a wobblin’ round in his argument, “They enjoy it.”

Says I, firm as Bunker Hill, and as lofty, “They don’t enjoy it.”

Says he, “They do.”

Says I, “Elder Judas Wart, you tell me that agin, and I’ll know the reason why.”

“Why,” says he, “they have petitioned Congress to not meddle with the laws.”

Says I, “Can you tell me, Elder Judas Wart, can you tell me honestly that there wasn’t man’s influence lookin’ right out of that petition?”

“No, mum, there wuzn’t. They done it of their own wills and acords.”

Says I, firmly, “I don’t believe it. And if I did, it would only show to me the blightin’, corruptin’, influence of your belief.”

“Why,” says he, “some of our wimmen are the most active in our church—full of religious zeal.”

Says I, coolly, “All kinds of zeal hain’t religious zeal.” Says I, “The kind that makes a mother throw her child into the Ganges, and burn herself with the dead body of her husband—you can call it religious zeal, if you want to, but I call it fanatical frenzy.”

Says he, “They are perfectly happy in their belief.”

Says I, “You needn’t never say that agin to me, thinkin’ I will believe it, for before Mormonism was ever made, human nature was made, wimmen’s hearts was made. And when you show me a man who would enjoy havin’ his right hand cut off, or his eyes plucked out of his head, then I will show you a woman, a womanly woman, who enjoys sharin’ the love of the man she worships—enjoys seein’ it passin’ away from her, given to another. Why, it is aginst nater, as much as it is for the sun to shine at midnight. Blackness and despair and gloom is what rains when the sun of love is gone down—it’s nater, and can’t be helped, no more than the sun can, or the moon, or anything. No woman ever enjoyed this wretched doctrine—that is, no good woman, no pure, tender-hearted, affectionate woman.”

“Why,” says he, “I s’posed you thought all wimmen was perfect.”

“No, I don’t, sir, no sir. A woman can lose all that is sweet and lovely in her nature—all the traits that make her so attractive, her tenderness, her affection, her constancy, her modesty, her purity. She can get very low down in the scale of being, lower, I think, than a man can get. You know the further up any one is, the worse it hurts ’em to fall.

“Now the angels that fell down from heaven, I s’pose it changed ’em, and disfigured ’em, and spilte ’em as bad agin as it would to fall down suller. Josiah fell a week ago last Wednesday night, with a hammer in one hand, and a box of nails in the other. He was fixin’ up a cupboard for me in the sullerway. He fell flat down and lay his hull length on the suller bottom. Skairt me awfully. Skairt him, too, and sort o’ madded him, as it always will a man when they fall. I was gettin’ the supper onto the table, and I started on the run for the suller door, and says I, in agitated axents, and weak as a cat with my emotions:

“Did it hurt you, Josiah?”

Says he, sort o’ surly, “It didn’t do me any good.”

But he got up, and was all right the next day. I have used this poetical simely, of its hurtin’ anybody worse to fall down from such a lofty height than to fall down the sullerway, to show my meanin’ that a pure woman’s nature is naturally very pure and lofty, and if she loses it she falls very low indeed.

“Lose it she can—all that makes her sweet and lovely and lovable; but while she keeps her woman’s heart and nature, her life, in your religion, must be a constant martyrdom, and must be in its nature demoralizin’ and debasin’, dealin’ the morals fearful and totterin’ blows.

“Why, don’t you s’pose I can take it to myself? Now, Home is the most heavenly word we know. We hain’t learnt the heavenly alphabet yet, none of us, and so can’t spell out the word Heaven as it ort to be spelt. We are children that hain’t learnt God’s language yet. But Home in its true meanin’ is sunthin’ as near heaven as we can translate and spell out below. Home, when it is built as any home must be in order to stand, on a true love, and in the fear of God, such a home is almost a heaven below. I know it, for a certain home was built on these very foundations upwards of 20 years ago, and not a j’int has moved, not a sleeper decayed. Such a home means delight, rest, comfort. I know it, and my Josiah knows it.

“But let Josiah Allen bring home one more wife, let alone a dozen or fifteen of ’em—let him bring home one small wife besides Samantha, and I should find that home meant sunthin’ very different from peace and rest and happiness. And Josiah Allen would find out that it did, too. He would, if I know my own heart, and am not deceived in myself. And when I think of it, think of what my own sect are a sufferin’ right here in our own land, it makes my blood bile up in my vains, and the tears jest start to every eye in my head, and if I had two dozen eyes I could cry and weep with every one of ’em, a thinkin’ how I should feel under them circumstances—a thinkin’ of the desecration of all that is holiest, and purest, and most blessed. Thinkin’ of the agony of remembrance, and regret, and despair that would sweep over me—remembrance of the old, happy days when I was blest with the love that had gone from me—regret for all the happy days, happy words of love and tenderness, happy hours of confidence and affection—mine once, gone forever. Despair, utter, black despair that all was past.

“And besides this sufferin’, think of the ravages it would make in my morals, as well as his’en. I know jest how much my morals can stand, I know to a inch jest how much strain I can put onto ’em. And I know, jest as well as I know my name was once Smith, that another wife would make ’em totter. And, to be perfectly plain and truthful, I know that wife would make ’em fall perfectly flat down, and break ’em all into pieces, and ruin ’em. I shouldn’t have a single moral left sound and hull, and I know it. I should be ugly.”

Says I, with a added eloquence and bitterness of tone, as my mind roved back onto a certain widder:

“To have another woman come a snoopin’ into my house and my pardner’s heart—why, language hain’t made mean enough to tell what my meanness would be under the circumstances. And her morals, too—why, don’t you s’pose her morals would be flat as a pancake? Yea, verily. And where would my Josiah’s morals be? He wouldn’t have none, not a moral, nor a vestige of any. And there would be three likely persons spilte, entirely, and eternally spilte. And do you s’pose we three persons are so different from any other three persons? No, human nature (man human nature, and woman human nature) is considerable the same all over the world.”

And agin as that fearful scene presented itself to my imagination, of another woman enterin’ into my Josiah’s heart, I sithed powerful, and went on with renewed eloquence. I was fearfully eloquent, and smart as I could be; deep.

Says I, “One man’s heart hain’t of much account, viewed in a permiscus way, but to the woman that loves him it’s a good deal, it is all. Wimmen are foolish about some things, and this is one of ’em. Her love is to her the very breath she breathes—it is the best part of her. Men don’t feel this way as a general thing (my Josiah duz, but he is a shinin’ exception). But as a general thing love is to them a sort of a side-show, a tolerable good entertainment, but it hain’t the hull circus.

“No, a man’s heart hain’t none too large for one woman to dwell in, especially if she is hefty, not at all too large, quite the reverse. And I can tell you, Elder Judas Wart, and tell it firm and solemn, that when it comes to dividin’ up that heart that was a tight fit in the first place, and lettin’ one woman after another come a troopin’ in, a pushin’ the lawful owner out of the way, jammin’ her round, bruisin’ of her, and in the end crowdin’ her completely out in the cold, I say, may God pity such a woman, for human pity can’t be made pitiful enough to reach her.”

Says Elder Judas Wart, “Men that hain’t Mormons sometimes has more than one woman inside of their hearts.”

“I know it,” says I. “But the law gets right onto such a man and stamps onto him. And public sentiment sets down on him hard. And I can tell you that when the hull community and law and religion and everything are all a settin’ on a man, and settin’ heavy, that man finds it is a pretty tuckerin’ business; he gets sick of it, and is glad to do better and be let up. But you make the iniquity lawful. You make law and religion and public sentiment all get under such a man, and boost him up—make out that the more crimes a man commits, the more wives he has, the higher place he will have in heaven. Why,” says I, “when I think it over, it hain’t no wonder to me that the Mormon leaders, before they let loose this shameful doctrine and putrifyin’ sin of polygamy, they settled down by a salt lake. I should have thought they would have needed salt. But salt never was made salt enough to save ’em, and they’ll find out so.”

He quailed a very little, or, that is, it looked like quail, though it might have been meachin’ness strong and severe. Powerful meach looks some like quail, at a first look. But he recovered himself in half a moment, and went on, in the haughtiest, impudentest tone he had used as yet:

“Wall, whether salt has helped us, or whatever did, we have flourished—nobody can deny that. We have made the desert blossom like a rose. We are industrious, stiddy, prudent, equinomical, hard-working. You can’t deny the good we have done in that way. We are full of good qualities, brim full of ’em.”

Says I, coldly, almost frigidly, “No amount of white-wash can cover up a whited sepulker so that my specks can’t see through it, and see the sepulker. Good store clothes can’t cover up a bad soul worth a cent. A blue satin vest, or even a pink velvet one, buttoned up over a bad heart, can’t make that heart none the purer. The vest might look well, and probable would. But when you know the bad heart beats under it, vile and wicked beats, why, that vest don’t seem no better to you, nor seem to set the man off no more, than if it was calico, with leather buttons. Material good can never make up for moral degradation.

“And your good qualities only make your sinful practices more dangerous, more successful in luring souls to destruction. It is like wreathin’ a sword with flowers, for folks to grip holt of and get their hands cut off (morally). It is like coverin’ a bottomless gulf with blossoming boughs, for folks to walk off on, and break their necks (as it were).”

“Wall,” says he proudly, “we have flourished, and are flourishin’ and are goin’ to still more. We are goin’ to extend our doctrine of polygamy further and further. We are goin’ to carry it into Arizona and all the other new territories—”

I riz right up, I was so agitated, and says I: “You shan’t carry it, not one step.”

Says he, firmly: “We will!”

Says I: “I tell you agin that you shan’t; and if you do I’ll know the reason why. I tell you that you shall drop it right there, by that salt lake, and let it lay there. It needs brine if anything ever did. You shan’t make no move to carry it a step further. You shall not carry this godless crime, a disgrace to religion and civilization, into new territories. The green turf of them lands is too fresh and bright to be blood-stained by the feet of weepin’ wimmen, bearin’ this heaviest of crosses that was ever tackled by ’em. You shall not darken the sunny skies and pollute the sweet air of new lands with this moral pestilence.”

Says he: “We will!”

Says I, firmly and sternly: “You won’t; and when I say you won’t, I mean it.”

“Wall,” says he, with a proud mean, “how are you goin’ to help yourself?”

Says I, in loud, excited axents: “If I can’t stop you myself, I know who can, and I will go to Uncle Sam myself. I’ll have a plain talk with that good old man. I’ll jest put it into his head what you are a tryin’ to do, and I’ll hunch him up, and make him stop you.”

Says he: “Don’t you s’pose sin and sorrow will ever be carried into the territories only as they are carried in by Mormons?”

“Yes, I do,” says I. “I s’pose that whenever humanity is sot down under the light of the Eternal, it will forevermore, as it has forever in the past, be followed by two shadows, the joyful and the sorrowful. Human nature can’t help itself; the Eternal Soul above will shine on, and the human nature below will throw its shadows—the dark one and the light one, first one and then the other, unbeknown to us, followin’ us all the time, and will follow us till the darkness of the human is all lost in the light of the divine. There hain’t no territories been discovered distant enough for the human soul to escape from itself—from the shadow of sorrow. I hain’t said there wuz. Neither have I said it could escape from sin. I s’pose the old man in human nature won’t never be wholly drove out of it this side of Eternity; and I s’pose wherever that old man is there will be caperin’ and cuttin’ up and actin’. But, as I have said more’n forty times, you ort to whip that old man, make him behave himself as well as you possibly can, be awful severe with him, and keep him under. But you don’t try to. You jest pet that old man, and humor him, and encourage him in his caperin’s. You try to make sin and cuttin’ up and actin’ respectable; protect it by the law.

“Why, sin is what all good men and wimmen must fight aginst; educate public sentiment aginst it; make it obnoxious; or what will become of everybody and the world if they don’t? Why, they will be ondone, they and the hull world, if they don’t. I will,” says I firmly, “I will see Uncle Sam about it at once.”

“Oh,” says he, in a impudent, pert tone, “Uncle Sam won’t do nothin’ to hinder us. He has always protected us. He has done well by us. He has let us do about as we was a mind to.”

“I know it,” says I, “but I’ll tell you,” says I, ontyin’ my apron-strings in a absent-minded sort of a mechanicle way, and then tyin’ ’em up agin in the same way (or about the same), “I’ll tell you what,” says I, for I was fairly determined to find some excuse for Samuel, if I possibly could, “the fact is, that old man hain’t been well for quite a number of years. He has seemed to be sort o’ runnin’ down; his constitution hain’t seemed right to me. And he has had miserable doctors; or that is, he has got help in some directions, good help, and in others he has had the poorest kind of physic. But,” says I, firmly, “that old man means well; there hain’t a well-meanin’er, conscientiouser old creeter on the face of the earth than that old man is.”

“Yes,” says he, “he has done well by us. We hain’t no fault to find with him.”

Oh! how that madded me. But I was determined to find all the excuses for Samuel that I could (though I was at my wit’s end, or pretty nigh there, to find ’em, and I can’t deny it). Says I,

“That old man has been more than half crazy for a number of years back. What with fightin’ and bloodshed right in his own family, amongst his own childern—and the injins screechin’ and warhoopin’ round his frontiers, and the Chinamen a cuttin’ up behind his back, and his neighbors a fightin’ amongst themselves, and jabbin’ at him every chance they got; and congressmen and everybody a stealin’ everything they could, right under his nose, and cuttin’ up and actin’. It is a wonder to me that the old man hain’t gin up long ago, and died off. I guess lots of folks thought, a number of years ago, that he wouldn’t live a year. And it wasn’t nothin’ but his goodness and solid principles that kep’ him up, and everybody knows it. He’s had enough to bear to kill a ox.”

“We ort to speak well of him,” says he agin. “He has done first-rate by us. He has seemed to like us.”

“Shet up!” says I. “I won’t hear another word from you aginst that old man. Your doin’s has worried Samuel almost to death—I know it has. I wouldn’t be afraid to bet (if I believed in bettin’) that it has wore on him more than all the work he has done for years.

“He wants to do right, that old Uncle does. He would be jest as glad to get rid of all of you,—Mormons, Oneida Communities, Free Lovers, and the hull caboodle of you,—as our old mare would be glad to get rid of flies in fly-time. But the thing of it is, with Samuel and the mare, how to go to work to do it. He can’t see to everything without help. I know what he needs. He needs a good, strong friend to help him. He wants to have somebody tell him the plain truth, to get his dander completely up; and then he wants to have that same female stand right by him, with a cast-iron determination, and hand him bullets and cartridges, while he aims his old revolutionary musket, and shoots down iniquities on every side of him.

“Why, where would Josiah Allen be, if it wuzn’t for me? He would come to nothin’, morals and all, if it wuzn’t for me to hunch him up. And Samuel has as much agin to worry him as Josiah has.

“Why, there is no tellin’ how many things that old man has to plague him and torment the very life out of him. Little things, too, some of ’em, but how uncommon little things will worry anybody, ’specially in the night. Curious things, too, some of ’em, that has worried me most to death way off here in Jonesville, and what feelin’s I should have felt to have had it a goin’ on right under my nose, as Samuel did.

“Now, when they made that new silver dollar, right there in his house I s’pose they done it, or in his wood-shed or barn—anyway, it was right where he could see it a goin’ on, and worry over it—you know they put onto it, ‘In God we trust.’ And it has fairly hanted me to find out what the government really meant by it—whether they meant that God wouldn’t let ’em get found out in their cheatin’ seven cents on every dollar, or trusted He would let ’em cheat fourteen cents on the next ones they made.

“Why, it has worried me awfully, and how Samuel must have felt about it. And that is only one little thing.

“There is the trade dollars we made on purpose to cheat China with, and sent over in the same ship we sent missionaries to convert ’em. I persume to say that old man has laid awake nights a worryin’ over what the heathens would think about it—about our sendin’ religion and robbery over to ’em in the same ship—about our sendin’ religious tracts, exhortin’ ’em to be honest, or they would certainly go to that bad place which I do not, as a Methodist, wish to speak of, and send these dollars to cheat ’em with in the same box—sendin’ eloquent and heartrendin’ tracts provin’ out to ’em that no drunkard can possibly go to Heaven, packed side by side with barrels of whiskey to teach ’em how to get drunk, so they will be sure not to go there. I know it has wore on him, so afraid that the heathens would be perfectly disgusted with a religion taught by professed followers of Him who come down to earth bearing peace, good-will to men, and then, after 1800 years of professed loyalty to Him, and His pure and exalted teachings, bore to their shores such fruit as cheating, falsehood, and drunkenness.

“It has hanted Samuel, I know it has. Hantin’ me as it has, it must have hanted him fur worse. He has had severe trials, that old gentleman has, and he has needed somebody to hunch him up, and lock arms with him, and draw him along on the path of Right. And I tell you when I talk with him I shan’t spare no pains with him. I shall use my eloquent tone freely. I shan’t be savin’ of gestures or wind. I shall use sharp reason, and, if necessary, irony and sarcasm. And I shall ask him (usin’ a ironicle tone, if necessary) how he thinks it looks in the eyes of the other nations to see him, who ort to be a model for ’em all to foller, allow such iniquity as Mormonism to flourish in his borders. To let a regular organized band of banditty murder and plunder and commit all sorts of abominations right under his honest old nose. And how it must look to them foreign nations to see such a good, moral old gentleman as he is lift his venerable old eyewinker and wink at such crime and sin. How insignificant and humiliatin’ it must look to ’em to see him allow a man in Congress to make laws that will imprison a man for havin’ two wives when the same man has got four of ’em, and is lookin’ round hungry for more.

“And I shall hunch him up sharp about sellin’ licenses to do wrong for money—licenses to make drunkards, and unfit men for earth or heaven—licenses to commit other crimes that are worse—sellin’ indulgences to sin as truly as ever Mr. Pope did.