of rock and concrete. There’s not five dollars’ worth of wood in the
construction. All the wood you see is haksessories.”
“Are all the temples built of stone only?” I asked cautiously, with the
air of a stone-mason out of a job.
“No,” said he. “Each is built on a seprit plan.”
“’Ere,” said he, turning to the rest of the company, “’ere we seals.
This ’ere room is for ordinances only. No, we don’t worship in the
Temple. It’s not used for public worship. You see the red-brick
building as you came up to the Temple. That is the Tabernacle where
public worship is held, and that is free to all. But ’ere in the Temple
we ’as the ordinances and the meditations.”
The guide was naturally a Mormon, and as he showed us around I thought
his main objects were to tell us nothing while pretending to tell us
all, and yet at the same time to make converts among the women. He did
all he could to interest the latter in the cooking and lighting and
warming and washing arrangements.
“You ’ave ’ere the electric stoves to cook the meals. You couldn’t
keep running in and out of the Temple in yer sacred garments to get
meals at resterongs, so we cooks ’ere. But there can be no smell of
cooking--as this exhaust takes all the smell away out of the building.
Very convenient, eh, ain’t it? We’ve had over ten thousand applications
from women to come and cook in the Temple.”
The farm-women giggled appreciatively. The guide led them on to the
laundering establishment. As the Mormons wear secret underlinen with
signs, they naturally don’t care to send their laundry out to wash.
And in the Temple we were given to understand every man and woman wore
special white garments. Consequently there would be much laundering.
But all was to be done by the latest machinery, driven by electric
power. “No hand-work, no scrubbing, no drudgery and gettin’ your
fingers red and ’ard,” said the guide. “Then, when the wash is done,
hpp, in they go to the drying chamber, and in a few seconds they are
sufficiently dry to be taken out and ironed on the electric irons.”
For a moment it was like being at an ideal home exhibition. “Then the
radiators,” said the guide, “you see, they don’t project into the
rooms, but are fixed in the walls dead level with the surface of the
walls.”
“Of course the Temple ’asn’t got its upolstery in yet, but in every
room the furniture will be all of a piece with the inlay wood of the
walls. If the walls is oak the furniture will be oak to match; if
it’s bird’s-eye maple, the furniture’ll be bird’s-eye maple; if it’s
Circassian mahogany the furniture will be Circassian mahogany too.
Every room will have its colour scheme. ’Ere you see the thermometer.
Now the temperature of the building will be regulated. It won’t matter
wot the weather is like outside, it will be controlled inside. The
engineer will ’ave ’is orfice outside the Temple and don’t never need
come in. All they ’as to do is telephone ’im to raise the temperature
ten degrees or lower it five and he’ll do it.”
“We comes to the baths” (they are pretty elaborate). “’Ere’s the men’s
section, over there’s the women’s. You natcherally bathe first of all
when you enter the Temple and remove every speck of dust or dirt from
your body. And ’ere are the robing-rooms where spotless garments is
waiting you to put on. You walks all in white wherever you go in the
Temple, and when it ’as been consecrated no more folks will ever go in
it in ordinary clothes like as you and me to-day.”
The Temple proved to be the last word in luxury and modern convenience.
In the most elegant club in London, Paris, or New York I have not seen
such luxury and sensual comfort as was in this Temple in the rough
wild west. Every room was inlaid with precious woods. The baths and
robing-rooms were worthy of a Sultan, the lounge and one-piece carpets
all suggested a material heaven. The guide showed us the vast font
reposing on the life-size figures of twelve oxen, the symbols of the
twelve tribes of Israel. This font was the centre of a stately chamber
with galleries running round it. From the galleries the friends of the
candidates could watch the ceremony of immersion. The font was large
enough to baptize families at once.
“And you can be baptized many times,” said the guide. “For yourself,
then for your friends, and then for the dead--for any one you would
like to have saved.”
“Baptized for the dead?” said one of the women in horror. “Yes,” said
he. “You think it strange, but the early Christians all used to do it.
Just turn up First Corinthians, chapter fifteen. ‘What shall they do
which are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? Why are
they then baptized for the dead?’ which shows plainly that the apostles
recommended it.”
“Is the water cold?” asked a farm-girl, timorously.
“Cold,” said the guide ingratiatingly, “oh, no! It’s warmed. It’s just
_nice_. I should say about the temperature of warm milk.”
“Oh!” “Oh!” There was chorus of approval from the women, who had been
considering the whole matter from a purely personal point of view.
We were then led to the Creation Room, the Garden of Eden Room, and the
Earth-natural Room, all adorned with works of art. There were pictures
of the world before Creation, and then of each stage in the process of
Creation.
“God don’t love chaos. ’E’s a great organiser. ’E organised it, and
’e divided the water from the hearth and gave us light and made the
hanimal creation--yes, all that lives and breeves,” said the guide.
“’Ere we meet to meditate on the Creation. Isn’t it a beutiful room?”
Some one asked him if the artists were Mormons. “Yes, all of them,”
said he, and then went on--
“You’d think it gets stuffy in ’ere. But no; we ’as the hair taken out
and washed and then returned. It’s a new device for washing the hair.”
We passed to Eden. Here were pictures of the whole animal creation in
benevolent and sentimental happiness; the tiger browsing beside the
lamb, and the lion and the giddy goat frisking around.
The guide purveyed the story of the Garden of Eden, but left out Adam
and Eve, and I walked away from him to wander round and seek the
portraits of our first parents. They were not included. But I found
that the painting of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and of the
Tree of Life were concave at the base, and that there was a recess and
an alcove to each. So there was a place for a living Adam and Eve to
sit, side by side, when the meditation on the Garden was going on. My
idea is that Eve would be seated in the Tree of Life and Adam in the
Tree of Knowledge. But that is surmise. The guide would not tell us
what the alcoves were for, but in the eye of curious imagination I saw
Adam and Eve sitting there in primitive innocence whilst the hearts of
the elders were inditing of a good matter.
From Eden we went to the Earth-natural, which was a hideous place where
every animal was depicted with a vicious expression. A large mad coyote
or, was it a hyena? seemed to control the atmosphere of the chamber.
“’Ere we ’ave the Hearth after sin ’as crept in,” said the guide. “’Ere
is life as we know it, full of sin which you can’t escape. You can all
learn a great deal from them pictures. Think of Hadam and Eve. ’Ave you
ever thought of it--’ow God gave them the garden of Eden, and of the
‘experience’ ’e made them ’ave there. Isn’t it true about us? ’E didn’t
mean that nothin’ should ever ’appen to us. ’E brought us into the
world that we might ’ave an experience.”
So we went on to the Marriage Room, which was entirely bare, and no one
could say what it would be like when the decorations and the furniture
had been added. I judged it time for me to cease being Simple Simon,
so I asked the guide as humbly as I could whether the marriages were
legal when the ceremony was performed.
“Yes,” said he. “You ’ave a legal marriage.”
“But polygamy?” I queried, and I saw his eyes flame.
“Polygamy ’as been done away with long ago when Utah was received into
the Union,” he answered in a gruff way.
“And what happened to the other wives when it was abolished?” asked
some one else very softly. But the guide did not reply. Instead he
began to hurry us out of the building. We had only seen a third of
it and were loth to go. But there was nothing for it. We managed to
get a last glimpse of an assembly hall with large frescoes on the
walls, depicting Christ distributing the Bread and the Wine to the
Mound-Builders, or Indians of South America, and underneath was written
III. Nephi 15. Another fresco had reference to the Book of Josiah,
which is part of Mormon Holy Writ--found by Joseph Smith, written on
gold plates.
The guide hurried us to the door. “I’ve some pictures of the Temple
for sale,” said he to the farm-women. But they seemed all to have been
scared by my question about polygamy. Vachel and I stopped to look
at the pictures. After all, they were only picture-postcards of the
exterior. We bought three.
“Good-b’ye,” said I. “And much obliged.” And I offered him my hand. He
gave me his left.
“Good-b’ye,” said Vachel. “Most interesting.” And he offered him his
hand. The guide gave him his left also.
“A left-handed shake,” said Vachel, meditatively, as we went down the
steps. “You know what that means.”
“No?”
“That means--Go to Hell!”
* * * * *
WE were much intrigued by all this, and found out that Adam is God
to the Mormons, and Christ only one of a series which culminated in
Brigham Young. Mormonism is the story of a passionate sensual man
with a fake religion, a leader, however, of men and women, capable of
starting a church, murdered and then succeeded by the great Brigham.
The Mormon community, persecuted ever, loathed and detested yet
not destroyed, plunged ever westward through the deserts with new
revelations all the way, always, however, being overtaken by the tide
of other pioneers and chased again. They were secret, and wanted to
be secret. But the United States always overtook them. Now they have
compromised in many ways and are not persecuted, and they multiply and
spread and propagandise. They are disciplined. In politics they all
vote one way--as ordered. They begin to be proud of America.
Vachel and I went up to the Temple at night. It looked like a place
produced by enchantment--the highest thing on the highest eminence
of the widespread but low-built city of Cardston. Clouds hid the top
of it. There was no one near but ourselves, apparently not even a
watchman. The massive gates were locked and barred, and above them
gleamed electric lanterns in large and graceful M’s.
We have learned an elementary lesson about them.
“Remember that, Vachel,” said I. “M for Mormon.”
“The guide said a true word,” said the poet. “God sent us into the
world that we might have an experience.”
* * * * *
WITH that our tramping ended. We left our pine-staffs leaning against a
Cardston wall. We slept in beds again and bought our coffee at a shop.
Gathering prose invaded the clear blue of our poetry. Some sadness,
like a shadow, settled on us. And it was good-b’ye to the mountains.
[Illustration]
_Thy Kingdom come, O Lord,
As once it came,
May it come again!
For once it came upon the mountains,
It came upon the wings of the morning
Amid the flowers and adown the streams.
It came into our eyes,
It came into our hearts.
Thy Kingdom come, O Lord,
As once it came,
May it come again!_
[Illustration: THE WORLD IS MY PARISH]
XXXVIII. BLOOM FOR EVER, O REPUBLIC!
WE crossed the line again and returned to the United States. And then
we went to the city of St. Paul, and we saw the falls where Minnehaha
and Hiawatha met. We stood on the high bank of the Mississippi and
considered meditatively the mounds of the mound-builders there. What
more impressive symbol for a world-traveller than these pre-historic
mounds--there before the Indians came--emblems of the infinite
forgotten past of man! Then we went to Chicago. We saw the beautiful
Wrigley building which has risen to look from drab Chicago over
Michigan Lake--a building raised by the profits of gum! Vachel
introduced me to the first sponsor of his verse, Harriet Monroe, of
“Poetry,” and he described to me how he and W. B. Yeats once divided
the annual poetry prize of Chicago, and how he was to have read aloud
the prize poem--“General William Booth Enters Heaven,” but to the
surprise of the company assembled gave his new, hitherto unheard-of
work “The Congo,” a poem which at that time must have been dumfounding
in its novelty. Then Yeats, who seemed to have snubbed every one
including the poet himself, made a very generous speech in favour of
Lindsay’s genius. And we met Chicago’s poet, Carl Sandburg, a rugged
Scandinavian with brown hair who claimed me as a “Nordic” also. And he
carried a large and old guitar on which he thrummed when reciting his
poems. He has heard Negro Blues in the South, and loves the coloured
folk, and has a whole repertoire of blues which he will sing you if
you will. I had a glass of beer with Sandburg in Milwaukee, the only
glass of anything of the kind offered me this time in these dry United
States. I met Ridgely Torrance, gentle and whimsical, with one long
lock of hair on his head like a Russian khokhol. Curiously enough, he
also had been enchanted by the Negroes and knew more about them than
us all, and he read poetry to us. There I met beautiful Zona Gale of
Portage whom, it is said, nearly every literary man who ever met her
has at some time or other loved. And meeting Zona I met Lulu Bett. We
met delectable Isidora, once queen of Springfield, now queen of another
city. And we stayed with Mrs. William Vaughan Moody, widow of that
dramatist and poet who wrote “The Great Divide” and “The Fire-Bringer.”
We were a rough-looking couple to be a lady’s guests, but Harriet Moody
loves the whole writing world for her husband’s sake and took us in,
and I found in her what so many know--a vivid personality, endlessly
kind. And couldn’t she cook! We loved her for her poetry and we loved
her for her pies.
* * * * *
WE went to Springfield, Illinois, and there we had a general clean-up
and our mosquito netting came back from the laundry marked “Lace; two
pieces.” I visited all Vachel’s cronies and friends and acquaintances
and enemies, and there were articles about us in the _Register_ and
_Journal_ every day for a fortnight, and I spoke to the Radical Kaffee
Klatsch for the celebrated Isidor Levine, and to the Conservative
Luncheon Club for the ubiquitous Elmer Neale, and I spoke to the _Via
Christi_ class for Mrs. Lindsay, and to the High School for Vachel’s
old teacher, and to the readers in the Public Library for Martha
Wilson. I had all the books on Russia put on a table, and I discoursed
upon them. The most-read book was _The Brothers Karamazof_, which
looked as if it had been in every bed in Springfield. We went to the
Negro churches together; we talked to Charlie Gibbs the famous coloured
attorney. We were entertained by Mrs. Warren--Drinkwater’s Springfield
hostess. We could not visit the Governor--he was under arrest. But
we visited the unsuccessful candidate for the governship at the last
election. Vachel discoursed on small-town politics while Mrs. Sherman
made us meringues. The poet introduced me to his sweethearts, who were
of all ages, from twelve to eighty. I made friends with beautiful
little Mary Jane Allen, who danced and glided into and out of our
presence, and smiled at us and lifted her child’s heart to us. And we
called on “Judith the Dancer,” who taught little Mary Jane. Always
along the Springfield streets the sight of the children exhilarated my
companion--“Stephen, I just love them to death,” said he.
I got to be very well known. I had a sort of royal progress in the
street, questioned and smiled at on all hands. “’Scuse me,” they would
say, “those boots, did you tramp in _them_?” or, “How d’ye do? My
little girl heard you give your talk in the school yesterday. She’s
full of it; it was _mighty_ good of you.”
I came to love the people of this little city, and to see the place
with Vachel’s creative eyes. Surely no one ever encountered such
kindness, such real warmth of heart, as I did there. It was very moving
for one who had come right out of the bitterness and quarrels of Europe
and out of the loneliness of London. They know something about living
which we are forgetting. They taught me much, and the poet has taught
me much also--the bounty of good humour and of unfailing kindness and
warmth. I love those who’ve got the strength of heart to lift their
hands to take yours, who open their mouths actually to speak to you.
So I cannot tell the poet what I owe him, and he says he cannot tell
me what he owes me. We made one final quest together, and that was
to Salem where Abraham Lincoln lived a poor man’s life, and learned
mathematics from Dominie Graham and fell in love with the daughter of
his landlord--unforgettable Anne Rutledge. And we paused before the
massive block of granite which marks Anne’s grave, strewn otherwise
with flowers, and refulgent with thoughts. And we read Masters’s
beautiful lines inscribed over the grave:
I am Anne Rutledge who sleep beneath these weeds,
Beloved in life of Abraham Lincoln,
Wedded to him, not through union
But through separation.
Bloom for ever, O Republic
From the dust of my bosom!
[Illustration]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or alternate spelling has been retained from the original.