Do not think me heartless for what I say, or assume, that, because I

happen to be healthy myself, I have no mercy for ill-health in others.

There are invalids who are objects of sympathy indeed, guiltless heirs

of ancestral disease, or victims of parental folly or sin,--those whose

lives are early blighted by maladies that seem as causeless as they are

cureless,--or those with whom the world has dealt so cruelly that all

their delicate nature is like sweet bells jangled,--or those whose

powers of life are all exhausted by unnoticed labors and unseen

cares,--or those prematurely old with duties and dangers, heroes of

thought and action, whose very names evoke the passion and the pride of

a hundred thousand hearts. There is a tottering feebleness of old age,

also, nobler than any prime of strength; we all know aged men who are

floating on, in stately serenity, towards their last harbor, like

Turner's Old Téméraire, with quiet tides around them, and the blessed

sunset bathing in loveliness all their dying day. Let human love do its

gracious work upon all these; let angelic hands of women wait upon

their lightest needs, and every voice of salutation be tuned to such a

sweetness as if it whispered beside a dying mother's bed.

But you, Dolorosus,--you, to whom God gave youth and health, and who

might have kept them, the one long and the other perchance always, but

who never loved them, nor reverenced them, nor cherished them, only

coined them into money till they were all gone, and even the ill-gotten

treasure fell from your debilitated hands,--you, who shunned the

sunshine as if it were sin, and called all innocent recreation time

wasted,--you, who staid under ground in your goldmine, like the

sightless fishes of the Mammoth Cave, till you were as blind and

unjoyous as they,--what plea have you to make, what shelter to claim,

except that charity which suffereth long and is kind? We will strive

not to withhold it; while there is life, there is hope. At forty, it is

said, every man is a fool or a physician. We will wait and see which

vocation you select as your own, for the broken remnant of your days.

* * * * *

THE UTAH EXPEDITION:

ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES.

[Continued.]

In the mean while Congress had assembled. The agitation on the subject

of Slavery, far from being suppressed, or even overshadowed, burned more

fiercely than ever before. The Pro-slavery faction in Kansas, stimulated

by the constant support of the National Administration, was engaged in a

final effort to maintain a supremacy over the affairs of that Territory

which the current of immigration from the Free States had been steadily

undermining. Against the will of nine-tenths of the population, it had

framed, with a show of technical legality, a Constitution intended to

perpetuate Slavery, which the Administration indorsed and presented to

Congress with an urgent recommendation for the admission under it

of Kansas as a State. In the commotion which these events excited

throughout the country, the transient gleam of importance which had

attached to the Mormon War was almost extinguished. The people of the

States no longer felt a much more vital interest in news from that

remote region than in tidings from the rebellion in India or of the wars

in China. Their attention, sympathies, and curiosity--were all fastened

upon the action of Congress with respect to Kansas,--for therein, it was

believed, were contained the germs of the political combinations for

the Presidential election of 1860. The same listlessness with regard to

affairs in Utah pervaded the Cabinet. All its _prestige_ was staked on

the result of the impending struggle in the House of Representatives

over the Lecompton Constitution, and its energies were abstracted from

every other subject, to be concentrated upon that alone.

Just at this time, Mr. Thomas L. Kane, of Pennsylvania,--son of the late

Judge of the United States District Court for that State, and brother of

the late Dr. Kane, the Arctic explorer,--solicited the Administration

for employment as a mediator between the Mormons and the Federal

Government. Mr. Kane was one of the few persons of education and social

standing who were well acquainted with Mormon history. He had visited

them at Winter Quarters, in Iowa, during their exodus from Nauvoo, in

the capacity of a commissioner to enlist the Mormon battalion which

served in the Mexican War. During an illness which attacked him there,

he was treated with an unremitting kindness, for which his gratitude

has been proportionate. Belonging to a family whose members have

been distinguished by strong traits of individuality, not to say

eccentricity, from that moment forward he displayed a practical interest

in the welfare of the sect. It is said that he became a convert to the

religious doctrines of Mormonism. Whether this be true at all, and,

if so, to what extent, it would he profitless at the present time to

inquire. For the purposes of this narrative, it is sufficient to assert

only, what is unchallenged, that he was a sincere admirer of the Mormons

as a people, and for a long series of years had defended them from

every reproach with a zeal which many of his friends thought inordinate.

Its experience in Kansas had familiarized the Cabinet with the use of

secret agents; but, nevertheless, the proposition of Mr. Kane was coldly

received. After a brief correspondence, he started for California, in

no capacity a representative of the government, if he himself is to be

believed, but bearing letters from Mr. Buchanan indorsing his character

as a gentleman, and exhorting Federal officials to render him such

courtesies as were within their power. Having arrived at San Francisco,

he journeyed southward to the lately abandoned Mormon settlement of

San Bernardino, near Los Angeles, travelling under the assumed name of

Osborne, and proclaiming his business to be the collection of specimens

for an entomological society in Philadelphia. There his real name and

purpose were detected, but he succeeded in obtaining transportation to

Salt Lake City, where he arrived on the 25th of February, 1858, and was

greeted by Young and Kimball, and the rest of the Mormon magnates, as an

old and cherished friend.

In the Annual Message of the President to Congress, his disposition to

make every other issue subordinate to that of admitting Kansas under the

Lecompton Constitution was manifest; and it influenced the tone of those

paragraphs which treated of affairs in Utah. Notwithstanding the fact

that the Mormons had committed every act of warfare against the United

States short of taking life, Mr. Buchanan qualified his language

concerning their conduct, stating, that, "unless Brigham Young should

retrace his steps, the Territory of Utah will be in a state of open

rebellion," but declining to accept the logical inference from his own

expression, that the rebellion was at the time open and manifest. He

recommended no further legislation concerning the matter than that four

regiments should be added to the army, to supply the place of those

which had been withdrawn from service in the East.

It was evident that the purpose for which he had originally planned the

expedition had failed. Forced, after all, no less by inclination than by

circumstances, into such a revival of Slavery agitation as he had never

contemplated during the interval between his election and inauguration,

the Utah War only incumbered his administration, promoting neither its

policy nor its prosperity. However it might result, it would not in the

least advance his interests; and it became his opinion, that, the sooner

it was quieted, the better for the welfare of the Democratic party,

which would be held responsible by the country for all mistakes in its

management. "After us the deluge," seemed to be adopted as the motto of

the entire policy of the Administration.

The only movement in Congress concerning Utah, before the New Year, was

the introduction into the House of Representatives, by Mr. Warren of

Arkansas, of a badly-worded resolution, prefaced by a worse-worded

preamble, looking to the expulsion from the floor of Mr. Bernhisel,

the Mormon delegate from the Territory. A lively discussion ensued

concerning the question of privilege under which Mr. Warren claimed the

right to introduce the resolution,--and when it was ruled in order, much

hesitation was evinced about adopting it, some members fearing that it

would establish a dangerous precedent for emergencies that might arise

in the future history of the country. The tone of debate showed that

there was little difference of opinion in the House concerning Utah

affairs,--the unanimity, however, being due in great part to ignorance

and indifference. The issue of Slavery in Kansas was absorbing. Mr.

Warren's resolution was referred to the Committee on Territories, and

slumbered upon their table through the whole session. The only other

movement in Congress, which deserves mention in this connection, was

the introduction, towards the close of January, by Senator Wilson of

Massachusetts, of a joint resolution authorizing the appointment of

commissioners to examine into the Mormon difficulties, "with a view to

their adjustment." This was referred by the Senate to the Committee on

Military Affairs, and was never heard of again.

The recommendation of the President for an increase of the army secured

favorable consideration from committees of both Houses, and the

discussion which ensued, upon the bills reported for that purpose, was

filled with allusions to the Utah question. Mr. Thompson of New York,

and Mr. Boyce of South Carolina, both made elaborate speeches on the

subject; but neither of them proposed any scheme for its solution. Such

a scheme, however, was suggested by Mr. Blair of Missouri, who advised

a reorganization of the Territorial government, in order to vest the

legislative power in the Governor and the Judges, for which a precedent

existed in the instance of the old Northwestern Territory; but no action

was had upon this suggestion. Through the entire debate, Mr. Bernhisel

remained silent. During the winter, the President conferred upon Colonel

Johnston the brevet rank of Brigadier-General, believing that the

uniform discretion he had manifested entitled him to promotion; and the

nomination was confirmed by the Senate.

While such were the transactions in Congress, the Mormons, in December,

had organized a government like that under which they had hitherto

subsisted. Their legislature--the same which had been elected under the

Organic Act of the Territory--met at Salt Lake City on the second Monday

of that month, in the hall of the Council House, and organized by the

choice of Heber C. Kimball as President of the Council and John Taylor

as Speaker of the House. Brigham Young retained the title and authority

of Governor, and addressed to the legislature the customary annual

message, reviewing the condition of the Territory. This document

was prepared in reality by Taylor, and was worded with considerable

ingenuity. Not the slightest allusion was made to the declarations of

independence that had been reiterated throughout the summer and autumn,

but the relations of Utah to the United States were discussed as those

of a Territory to the Union. The President was himself charged with

treason in his action towards the Mormons, the Governor and Judges whom

he had appointed were reviled as depraved and abandoned men, and the

army was again proclaimed a mob,--while Utah was lauded as the "most

loyal Territory known since the days of the Revolution." The theory of

Squatter-Sovereignty was the basis of the argument, and Mr. Buchanan was

accused, and with some reason, of inconsistency in his application of

that doctrine.

In response to this message, the legislature passed a series of

resolutions, pledging itself to sustain "His Excellency Governor Young"

in every act he might perform or dictate "for the protection of the

lives, peace, and prosperity of the people of the Territory,"--asserting

that the President had incurred the "contempt and decided opposition

of all good men," on account of the "act of usurped authority and

oppression" of which he was guilty, in "forcing profane, drunken,

and otherwise corrupt officials upon Utah at the point of the

bayonet,"--expressing a determination to "continue to resist any attempt

on the part of the Administration to bring the people into a state of

vassalage by appointing, contrary to the Constitution, officers whom the

people have neither voice nor vote in electing,"--avowing the purpose

not to suffer "any persons appointed to office for Utah by the

Administration either to qualify for, or assume, or discharge, within

the limits of the Territory, the functions of the offices to which they

have been appointed; so long as the Territory is menaced by an invading

army,"--and declaring that the people of Utah would have their voice in

the selection of their officers. These were sweet-scented blossoms to

blow so early on the tree of Squatter-Sovereignty, at that time scarcely

four years old!

The only acts of the legislature were one disorganizing the County

of Green River, in which the army was encamped, and attaching it for

legislative and judicial purposes to Great Salt Lake County; another

divesting the Governor of power to license the manufacture of ardent

spirits, and conferring that authority upon the President of the Church

of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; and several others in pursuance

of the system of granting away large tracts of public domain to private

persons, in direct contravention of a clause in the Organic Act of the

Territory, which provides that "no law shall be passed interfering with

the primary disposal of the soil." To these acts Brigham Young attached

his signature as Governor, and affixed the Territorial seal.

A Memorial to Congress was adopted also, which was transmitted to

Washington, and received there and laid before the two Houses on the

16th of March. This document charged that the action of the National

Government towards Utah was based upon the statements of "lying

officials and anonymous letter-writers"; it rehearsed the history of the

Mormons,--their persecutions in Missouri and Illinois,--and declared

that the object of the Utah expedition was to inflict similar outrages.

"Give us our constitutional rights," it said; "they are all we ask; and

them we have a right to expect. For them we contend, and feel justified

in so doing. We claim that we should have the privilege, as we have the

constitutional right, to choose our own rulers and make our own laws

without let or hindrance." Although this Memorial was nothing more than

an infuriated tirade, it was honored in both Houses by reference to the

Committees on Territories, from which it received all the consideration

it deserved.

Indifferent and inactive as this review shows Congress and the President

to have been concerning Utah, a similar apathy was impossible in the War

Department. Not only the welfare, but the lives even, of the troops at

Fort Bridger, depended on its action. Transactions of such magnitude

had not been incumbent on its bureaus since the Mexican War. The chief

anxiety of General Johnston was for the transmission of supplies from

the East as early as possible in the spring. The contractors for their

transportation during the year 1857 had wintered several trains at Fort

Laramie, together with oxen and teamsters. The General entertained a

fear that so great a proportion of their stock might perish during the

winter as to cripple their advance until fresh animals could be obtained

from the States. Combined with this fear was an apprehension for the

safety of Captain Marcy. A prisoner, whom the Mormons had captured in

October on Ham's Fork, escaped from Salt Lake City at the close of

December, and brought news to Camp Scott that they intended to fit out

an expedition to intercept the command and stampede the herds with which

that officer would move from New Mexico. The dispatches in which these

anxieties were communicated to General Scott, together with suggestions

for their relief, were intrusted in midwinter to a small party for

conveyance to the States. The journey taught them what must have been

the sufferings of the expedition which Captain Marcy led to Taos.

Reduced at one time to buffalo-tallow and coffee for sustenance, there

was not a day during the transit across the mountains when any stronger

barrier than the lives of a few half-starved mules interposed between

them and death by famine. All along the route lay memorials of the march

of the army, and especially of Colonel Cooke's battalion,--a trail of

skeletons a thousand miles in length, gnawed bare by the wolves and

bleaching in the snow, visible at every undulation in the drifts.

But before the arrival of these dispatches at New York, the arrangements

of the War Department to forward supplies to Utah had been completed.

The representations of the contractors' agents with regard to the

condition of the cattle at Fort Laramie were received without question,

and Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel Hoffmann, of the Sixth Infantry, was

dispatched to that post to superintend the advance of the trains.

Additional contracts, of an unprecedented character, were entered into

for furnishing and transporting all the supplies which would be needed

during the year 1858, both for the troops already in the Territory

and for the reinforcements which were ordered to concentrate at Fort

Leavenworth and march to Utah as soon as the roads should be passable.

These reinforcements were about three thousand strong, comprising

the First Cavalry, the Sixth and Seventh Infantry, and two

artillery-batteries. The trains necessary for so large a force, in

addition to that at Fort Bridger, it was estimated would comprise at

least forty-five hundred wagons, requiring more than fifty thousand

oxen, four thousand mules, and five thousand teamsters, wagon-masters,

and other _employés_. To the shame of the Administration, these gigantic

contracts, involving an amount of more than six million dollars,

were distributed with a view to influence votes in the House of

Representatives upon the Lecompton Bill. Some of the lesser ones, such

as those for furnishing mules, dragoon-horses, and forage, were granted

arbitrarily to relatives or friends of members who were wavering upon

that question. The principal contract, that for the transportation of

all the supplies, involving, for the year 1858, the amount of four

millions and a half, was granted, without advertisement or subdivision,

to a firm in Western Missouri, whose members had distinguished

themselves in the effort to make Kansas a Slave State, and now

contributed liberally to defray the election-expenses of the Democratic

party.

It was said to have been contemplated, for a while, during the winter,

to operate against the Mormons from California, and to send General

Scott to San Francisco to direct arrangements for the purpose; but the

project, if ever seriously entertained, was soon abandoned, it being

evident that for the speedy subjugation of Utah the Missouri frontier

furnished the only practicable base-line of operations.

At Camp Scott, the winter dragged along wearily. Between November and

March only two mails arrived there, and the great monetary crisis in the

United States was unknown till months after it had subsided. The Mormons

were constantly in possession of later intelligence from the States

than the army; for, by a strange inconsistency, their mails to and from

California were not interfered with. A brigade-guard was mounted daily

at the camp larger than that of the whole American army on the eve

of the battles before Mexico, and scouting parties were continually

dispatched to scour the country in a circuit of thirty miles around

Fort Bridger; for there was constant apprehension of an attempt by the

Mormons to stampede the herds on Henry's Fork, if not to attack the

regiment which guarded them. No tidings arrived from Captain Marcy, and

a most painful apprehension prevailed as to his fate. At the close of

January, Dr. Hurt, the Indian Agent, after consultation with General

Johnston, started from the camp, accompanied only by four Pah-Utahs, and

crossed the Uinta Mountains, through snow drifted twenty feet deep, to

the villages of the tribe of Uinta-Utahs, on the river of the same name.

It was his intention, in case of need, to employ these Indians to

warn Captain Marcy of danger and afford him relief. It proved to be

unnecessary to do so, and Dr. Hurt returned in April; but the hardships

he endured in the undertaking resulted in an illness which threatened

his life for weeks. On the 13th of March, an express had come in from

New Mexico, bringing news of the safe arrival of Captain Marcy at Taos

on the 22d of January. The sufferings of his whole party from cold and

hunger had been severe. Their provisions failed them, and they had

recourse to mule-meat. Many of the men were badly frost-bitten, but only

one perished on the journey.

On the previous evening,--March 12th,--the monotony of the camp had been

unexpectedly disturbed by the arrival, from the direction of Salt Lake

City, of a horseman completely exhausted by fatigue and cold, who proved

to be no other than Mr. Kane, whose mission to the Mormons by way of

California was at that time totally unknown to the army. The next

morning he introduced himself to the Governor, was received as his

guest, and remained in conference with him throughout the day. What was

the character of their communication is unknown, except by inference

from its results. When presented to Judge Eckels, on the following day,

Mr. Kane exhibited to him the letters he bore from the President, and

other letters, also, from Brigham Young, accrediting him as a negotiator

in the existing difficulties. To General Johnston he showed nothing; nor

did the Governor, to the knowledge of the camp, acquaint either that

officer or any other person with the purport of his business. It was

evident to everybody, however, that the Mormon leaders, conscious of

their inability to resist the force by which they would be assailed so

soon as the snow should melt upon the mountains, were engaged in an

effort, of which Mr. Kane was the agent, to secure through the Governor,

if possible, indemnity for their past offences, in consideration of

acknowledgment of his authority.

The domestic condition of the people of the Valley confirmed the belief

that this was the purpose of Mr. Kane's mission. Dependent as they had

always been, since their settlement in Utah, upon Eastern merchants

for an annual supply of groceries, dry goods, wearing-apparel of all

descriptions, and every article of luxury, their stock of some of even

the necessaries of life--such as coffee, tea, sugar, tobacco, calicoes,

boots and shoes, stationery--was at this time nearly exhausted. Many of

the poorer families were actually half naked, and, to supply them with

covering, an ecclesiastical mandate had been issued, directing all

persons who had spare clothing of any description to deposit it at the

tithing-office in Salt Lake City, to be there exchanged for grain and

cattle with those who were in need.

At the commencement of the rebellion, the Mormon settlements in Southern

California had been broken up, and all the missionaries of the Church

were summoned to return from foreign lands. The influx of population

from these sources, though slight, yet increased the destitution. Almost

all the people, too, had been withdrawn from productive employments

throughout the autumn and winter. Although the number of militia kept

under arms, after the formation of the camp at Fort Bridger, probably at

no time reached fifteen hundred, while in October and November it had

exceeded three thousand, still the fever of excitement which raged

through the community distracted its members from any hearty labor.

Great quantities of winter-wheat, to be sure, had been sown, and the

fields were prepared for cultivation during the coming summer; but no

public improvements were prosecuted, and everybody was prepared for such

an exodus as had been predicted to Captain Van Vliet.

The complete subserviency of the people to the hierarchy was never more

strikingly manifest than in a financial scheme which Brigham Young

devised at this time. Among the Mormons there had always been a quantity

of gold coin in circulation, much exceeding, in proportion to their

number, the amount circulating in any other portion of America. This was

owing to the fact, that the Church had unconstitutionally arrogated to

itself the prerogative of coining and regulating the value of money. The

Mormon battalion which had been enlisted at Winter Quarters in Iowa was

disbanded in California at the close of the Mexican War, and most of its

members went to the gold-diggings. The treasures they there accumulated

were conveyed to Utah, where the Church established a mint and coined

gold pieces of $2.50, $5, $10, and $20. The device on the obverse was

two hands clasped in one of the grips of the Endowment; on the reverse,

a figure from the Book of Mormon, with the motto, "Holiness to the

Lord." The intrinsic value of these coins being more than ten per

cent less than their denominations, they were all retained within the

Territory. Young now prevailed upon his people to surrender whatever

gold and silver they possessed, amounting to several hundred thousand

dollars, and accept in return the notes of a banking association of

which he himself was president and one of his numerous sons-in-law

cashier. These notes were redeemable, in amounts of not less than one

hundred dollars, in live stock, the appraisement of the value of which

rested with the officers of the association. So absolute was the

degradation and ignorance of the population, that they submitted to this

extortion without a murmur.

Mr. Kane had remained in Salt Lake City eight days before starting

towards Fort Bridger,--a period quite long enough for a trusted friend

of the Mormon leaders to ascertain the extremities to which the people

were reduced. To secure the safety of those leaders who were under

indictment for treason, there was no choice except between flight and

inducing the Federal authorities to temporize. Both he and they were

conscious that the advance of the army could not be successfully

resisted, when the snow should cease to bar its way. In case of the

flight of the leaders, or of a general exodus of the population, only

two courses lay open to them,--northward toward the British Possessions,

southward toward the provinces of Upper Mexico.

The first two days of Mr. Kane's sojourn in camp satisfied him of the

cooperation of Governor Cumming in a plan for temporizing, as well as of

the impossibility of enlisting General Johnston or Judge Eckels in any

such scheme. An imaginary affront, to which he believed himself at this

time to have been subjected by the General, led him into a course of

action which, had it been followed out, might have terminated his

mission abruptly. Considering the fact that he was within the

guard-lines of a military encampment, in a country where a state of

warfare existed, it was perhaps too great forbearance on the part of the

General not to have required to be informed of his business, since

he himself volunteered no explanation. An invitation to dinner being

dispatched to him from head-quarters,--and such an invitation was no

slight compliment in a camp where the rations were so abridged,--the

orderly to whom it was intrusted for delivery, whether maliciously or

not it does not appear, pretended to have mistaken his directions, and

proceeded to place him under arrest. The mistake, when discovered, was

of course immediately rectified; but Mr. Kane became so excited in

consequence, that, with the assent of the Governor, he indited a

challenge to the General, and applied to a gentleman from Virginia to

act as his second. Having received a decided rebuff in that quarter, he

was induced to abandon the design by the interposition of Judge Eckels,

who became acquainted with what was passing, and informed the Governor

that he had ordered the United States Marshal to arrest all the parties

concerned, in case another step should be taken in the affair. It was

not till some time afterwards that these transactions came to the

knowledge of General Johnston.

Mr. Kane remained with the Governor until April, absenting himself once,

however, for a day, in order to hold a secret interview with a party of

Mormons who had come into the vicinity of the camp. Notwithstanding his

presence, no precaution to protect the herds was neglected, nor was the

guard-duty at all relaxed. On the 18th of March, although a furious

snow-storm raged all day long, the encampment was moved down Black's

Fork to the immediate neighborhood of Fort Bridger,--a spot less

sheltered, but far more secure from attack. On the 3d of April, an event

occurred for which everybody was prepared. The Governor announced to

General Johnston his intention to proceed to Salt Lake City in company

with Mr. Kane; and on the 5th, they started upon the journey.

The District Court commenced its spring term at Fort Bridger the same

day. In his charge to the grand jury, Judge Eckels was explicit on the

subject of polygamy, instructing them substantially as follows: That

among the Territorial statutes there was no act legalizing polygamy, nor

any act affixing a definite punishment to that practice as such; that,

consequently, whether the old Spanish law or the Common Law constituted

the basis of jurisprudence in the Territory, the definition of marriage

recognized by both was to be received there, which limited that

institution to the union of one man with one woman, and also the

definition of adultery common to both, by which that crime consisted in

the cohabitation of either the man or the woman with a third party; that

among the Territorial statutes there was an act affixing a definite

punishment to adultery, and accordingly that it was the duty of the

grand jury to inquire whether that act had been infringed by parties

liable to their inquisition.[A] No indictment, however, was returned for

the offence; neither were any proceedings had upon the indictments for

treason. The business of the court was restricted to such crimes as

larceny, and assault and battery, among the heterogeneous mass of

camp-followers.

[Footnote A: As this charge has become of great importance in the

affairs of the Territory, we subjoin the precise language of that

portion of it which refers to polygamy:--

"It cannot be concealed, gentlemen, that certain domestic arrangements

exist in this Territory destructive of the peace, good order, and morals

of society,--arrangements at variance with those of all enlightened and

Christian communities in the world; and sapping as they do the very

foundation of all virtue, honesty, and morality, it is an imperative

duty falling upon you as grand jurors diligently to inquire into this

evil and make every effort to check its growth. It is well known that

all of the inhabited portion of this Territory was acquired by treaty

from Mexico. By the law of Mexico polygamy was prohibited in this

country, and the municipal law in this respect remained unaltered by its

cession to the United States. Has it been altered since we acquired it?

After a most diligent search and inquiry, I have not been able to find

that any such change has been made: and presuming that this law remains

unchanged by legislation, all marriages after the first are by this law

illegal and void. If you are then satisfied that such is the fact, your

next duty is to inquire by what law in force in this Territory are

such practices punishable. There is no law in this Territory punishing

polygamy, but there is one, however, for the punishment of adultery;

and all illegal intercourse between the sexes, if either party have a

husband or wife living at the time, is adulterous and punishable by

indictment. No consequences in which a large proportion of this people

may be involved in consequence of this criminal practice will deter you

from a fearless discharge of your duty. It is yours to find the facts

and to return indictments, without fear, favor, affection, reward,

or any hope thereof. The law was made to punish the lawless and

disobedient, and society is entitled to the salutary effects of its

execution."]

At the distance of a few miles from Fort Bridger, the Governor and Mr.

Kane were received by a Mormon guard. At various points on their journey

squads of militia were encountered, and in Echo Cañon there was a

command of several hundred. The Big Mountain, which the road crosses

twenty miles from Salt Lake City, was covered so deep with snow, that

the party was obliged to follow the cañons of the Weber River into the

Valley. Upon arriving at the city, on the 12th of April, the Governor

was installed in the house of a Mr. Staines, one of the adopted sons

of Brigham Young, and was soon after waited upon by Young himself, in

company with numerous ecclesiastical dignitaries. The Territorial seal

was tendered to him, and he was recognized to his full satisfaction

in his official capacity. He remained more than three weeks. Except

fugitive statements in newspapers, the only connected account of

his proceedings is from his own pen, and consists of two official

letters,--one addressed to General Johnston, under date of April 15th,

the other to the Secretary of State at Washington, dated May 2d. The

former merely announces his arrival, reception, and recognition,

transmits charges against Dr. Hurt, of having excited the Uinta Indians

to acts of hostility against the Mormons, and suggests that he should

desire a detachment of the army to be dispatched to chastise that

tribe, but a requisition for that purpose was made neither then nor

subsequently. The letter to Secretary Cass states that his time was

devoted to examining the public property of the United States which was

in the city,--the records of the courts, the Territorial library, the

maps and minutes of the Surveyor General,--and exculpates the Mormons, in

great part, from the charge of having injured or embezzled it.

During his stay, information was communicated to him, that there was a

number of persons who were desirous of leaving the Territory, but

unable to do so, considering themselves restrained of their liberty.

Accordingly, on the following Sunday, he caused notice to be given from

the platform in the Tabernacle, that he assumed the protection of all

such persons, and desired them to communicate to him their names

and residences. During the ensuing week, nearly two hundred persons

registered themselves in the manner he proposed, and a greater number

would undoubtedly have been glad to follow their example, but were

deterred by the surveillance to which they were subjected by certain

functionaries of the Church before being admitted to his presence. Those

who were registered were organized into trains, with the little movable

property they possessed, and dispatched towards Fort Bridger. They

arrived there in the course of May,--as motley, ragged, and destitute a

crowd as ever descended from the deck of an Irish emigrant-ship at New

York or Boston. The only garments which some possessed were made of the

canvas of their wagon-covers.

Many were on foot. For provisions, they had nothing except flour and

some fresh meat. It is a fact creditable to humanity, that private

soldiers, by the score, shared their own abridged rations and scanty

stock of clothing with these poor wretches, and in less than a day after

their arrival they were provided with much to make them comfortable.

On that same Sunday, the Governor made a speech to the congregation,

being introduced by Brigham Young. He reviewed the relations of the

Mormons to the Federal government; assumed that General Johnston and the

army were under his control; pledged his word that they should not

be stationed in immediate contact with the settlements; and gave

assurances, also, that no military _posse_ should be employed to arrest

a Mormon until every other means had been tried and had failed. At

the close, he invited any of their number to respond. Various persons

immediately addressed the audience in almost frantic speeches,

concerning the murder of Joseph and Hiram Smith at Carthage, the

persecution of the Saints in Missouri and Illinois, the services

rendered by the Mormon Battalion to an ungrateful country during the

Mexican War, the toils and perils of the migration to Utah, and the

character of the Federal officers who had been sent to rule the

Territory. Personal insults were heaped upon the Governor, and a scene

of the wildest confusion was the result, which was quieted with great

difficulty by Young himself. It was manifest that the mass of the

people, overconfident of their capacity to resist the troops, were not

fully prepared for the capitulation the leaders were willing to make to

save their own necks from the halter; and, at a second meeting during

the afternoon, Young yielded somewhat to the popular clamor.

All this while, a movement of a most extraordinary character was being

carried on, which had commenced before the Governor entered the Valley.

The people of the northern settlements, along the base of the Wahsatch

Mountains, including Salt Lake City, were deserting their homes,

abandoning houses, crops, and their heavier furniture, and migrating

southward. Long wagon-trains were sweeping through the city every day,

accompanied by hundreds of families, and droves of horses and cattle.

A fair estimate of the entire Mormon population of Utah is about

forty-five thousand. Of this number, ten thousand is the proportion of

the towns north of Salt Lake City, and upward of fifteen thousand that

of the city itself and the settlements in its immediate neighborhood.

Considerably more than half the people of the Territory, therefore,

shared in this emigration. What was its object and what its destination

are still mysteries; but it was probably directed toward the

mountain-ranges in the southwestern portion of the Great Basin, of the

topography of which region--hitherto unvisited by Federal explorers--the

Mormons undoubtedly possess accurate information. At any rate, it was

initiated and conducted under the direction of the Church, and Young and

Kimball were among the first to lead the way. Commencing late in March,

it continued until June, and before the beginning of May more than

thirty-five thousand people were concentrated on the western shore of

Lake Utah, chiefly in the neighborhood of Provo, fifty miles south of

Salt Lake City. Such a scene of squalid misery, such a spectacle of want

and distress, was never before witnessed in America. More than half

this multitude could not be accommodated in the towns, and lodged in

board-shanties, wigwams, mud-huts, log-cabins, bowers of willow-branches

covered with wagon-sheets, and even in holes dug into the hill-sides.

The most common quarters, however, were made by removing a wagon-body

from its wheels, placing it upon the ground, and erecting in front of

it a bower of cedars. It is needless to dwell on the exasperation which

animated all who submitted to these sacrifices. In the history of the

Albigenses hunted through Languedoc, or of the Jews writhing under the

Spanish Inquisition, a record of similar bitterness of feeling may be

found, but its parallel does not exist outside the annals of religious

persecution.

Governor Cumming returned to Fort Bridger during the second week in

May, still accompanied by Mr. Kane, and also by a party of Mormons

who intended to escort the latter to Missouri. Upon his arrival, he

addressed a letter to General Johnston, stating, officially, that the

people of Utah had acknowledged his authority, and that the roads

between the camp and Salt Lake City were free for the transit of mails

and passengers, the Mormon forces having withdrawn from the cañons, and

none of the Territorial militia remaining under arms except with his

consent and approbation. A day or two later, Mr. Kane bade him farewell

and started toward the States, his mission having been completed.

It may be well to pause here and estimate its precise results. It had

secured delay. The herds on Henry's Fork had thriven better than was

expected, and toward the close of April the number of mules in working

condition was sufficient to have dragged a train of two hundred wagons.

The dragoon-horses which survived could have been assigned to the

artillery-batteries, and the regiment have served as infantry. With this

equipment, slight though it may appear, a rapid movement upon the Valley

was possible; and whatever may have been the opinion during the previous

autumn, it was the universal opinion in the spring that the force at

Camp Scott could have routed any body of militia that might have opposed

its advance, although, perhaps, it was not sufficient to subjugate the

Territory, in case the Mormons should flee to the mountains. Provisions,

also, were running low in the camp. The ration of flour had been further

reduced. All the cattle had been slaughtered, and there was every

prospect of recourse to mule-meat before the first of June. Everything,

therefore, favored the plan of an early march toward the city; and it

is certain that it would have been commenced without awaiting

reinforcements from the States, had not the Governor's scheme for

pacification intervened. Distrustful of its expediency or propriety

though General Johnston might have been, he deemed it his duty to await

its result. Neither he nor the Governor being supreme in the direction

of affairs, it was the duty of each to defer so far as might be to the

action of the other.

In the next place, Mr. Kane's interposition had produced an

irreconcilable difference of opinion between the civil and the military

authority. This is evident from what has already been stated, and there

is no need to confirm the fact by argument. The Governor returned to

Fort Bridger in May, believing the Mormons to be an injured people,

whose cause was in the main just. But his position was full of

difficulties. He had been recognized in his official character, it is

true; but he was conscious that every Mormon acknowledged a political

influence superior to his own, which was directing the emigration

southward, and leaving him Governor of empty villages and deserted

fields. The only hope he entertained of checking this exodus was by

quashing the indictments for treason which had been found against the

Mormon leaders, and by insuring them against contact with the troops.

The first he was powerless to effect; it was a matter beyond his

control,--solely within the cognizance of the courts. The second he

had assumed to be within his power, and had so assured the Mormons; but

there he was at variance with General Johnston, who denied his claim to

absolute authority over the movements of the army.

Unknown, however, to the parties who were agitating these perplexing

questions, a superior power had already intervened and solved

the difficulty. On the 6th of April, the President had signed a

Proclamation, at Washington, rehearsing to the people of Utah Territory,

at considerable length, their past offences, and particularly those

which immediately preceded and followed the outbreak of the rebellion,

and declaring them traitors; but, "in order to save the effusion of

blood, and to avoid the indiscriminate punishment of a whole people

for crimes of which it is not probable that all are equally guilty,"

offering "a free and full pardon to all who will submit themselves to

the authority of the Federal Government." This document was intrusted

to two Commissioners for conveyance to the Territory;--one of them, Mr.

L.W. Powell, lately Governor, and at the time Senator-elect, of the

State of Kentucky; the other, Major Ben M'Culloch, of Texas, who had

served with distinction in Mexico. In their appointment, Mr. Buchanan

imitated the example of President Washington, who designated a similar

commission to convey his proclamation to the whiskey-insurgents in

Pennsylvania.

The reinforcements and supply-trains for the army were at this time

concentrating at Fort Leavenworth, Major-General Persifer F. Smith was

assigned to the command-in-chief, and it was intended that the whole

force, after concentration in Utah, should be divided into two brigades,

one to be commanded by General Harney, the other by General Johnston.

Leaving the columns preparing to advance over the Plains, the

Commissioners started from the Fort on the 25th of April. On the same

day, Lieutenant-Colonel Hoffmann advanced from Fort Laramie with several

companies of infantry and cavalry, escorting the supply-trains which

were parked there through the winter, and on the speedy arrival of which

at Camp Scott the subsistence of General Johnston's command depended,

unless it should force its way into the Valley. On the 1st of May, he

had reached La Bonté, a tributary of the North Platte, fifty miles from

the Fort. There he encountered the severest storm that had occurred in

that region for many years. The snow fell breast-deep, and was followed

by a pelting rain which killed his mules by scores. He was forced to

remain stationary more than a week, and when he renewed the march the

trains were clogged by mud foot-deep.

The Commissioners reached Camp Scott on the 29th of May. The President's

Proclamation had been received the day before. With the exception of a

few persons who were prepared for such a document by reflection on Mr.

Kane's mission, everybody was astonished at its purport. It seemed

incredible that a lenity should have been extended to the Mormon rebels

which was refused to the Free-State men in Kansas, who were once

indicted for treason and sedition,--and equally incredible that all the

advantages for the solution of the Utah problem which had been gained by

the rising of the Mormons in arms should be thrown away. There was none

of the bloodthirsty excitement in the camp which was reported in the

States to have prevailed there, but there was a feeling of infinite

chagrin, a consciousness that the expedition was only a pawn on Mr.

Buchanan's political chess-board; and reproaches against his folly were

as frequent as they were vehement. Had he excepted from the amnesty the

Mormon leaders, who alone had been indicted, the Proclamation might have

been considered an act of judicious clemency; for that exception would

have accomplished every object that could be desired. As it was, it

annihilated all that had been gained by the enormous expenditures and

the toils and sufferings of the past year, and it sentenced the army to

an indefinite term of imprisonment in an American Siberia. For the sake

of ridding the Administration of immediate trouble, it turned the Church

leaders loose again upon the community, purged of all offence, and

postponed to a future day a terrible issue, the ultimate avoidance of

which is impossible. "After us the deluge," was still the motto of the

President and his Cabinet.

At the camp the Commissioners remained only three days, which they

employed in obtaining accurate information concerning the transactions

of the last three months; for when they started from Missouri, no news

of the result of Mr. Kane's mission had reached the frontier.

On the 2d of June, they started for the Valley, intending to summon the

leading Mormons to an interview, and receive their formal acceptance of

the terms of the Proclamation,--of which, of course, there could be no

doubt. They were accompanied by the postmaster of Salt Lake City, with

the mails for the Mormons, which had been detained at the camp since the

commencement of the rebellion. The Governor and the Superintendent of

Indian Affairs followed them the next day. The rest of the Federal

officers refused to join the party, or to make any movement based on a

supposed capitulation of the Mormons, until their submission should be

perfected. There were many circumstances attending the departure of

the Governor which showed that he was doubtful of the stability of the

positions he had been led by Mr. Kane to assume. He expressed himself

distrustful of the cooperation of the Commissioners in his plan for

pacifying the Territory; and he protested vehemently against allowing

persons to accompany the party in order to report for the press the

proceedings at the expected conferences. Every day made it more and more

evident that he had committed himself to the Mormons farther than he

cared to acknowledge.

Before the Commissioners left the camp, they urged General Johnston not

to delay the advance of the army one moment beyond the time when he

should be ready and desire to march. On the 8th of June, Captain Marcy

arrived at the Fort with a herd of nearly fifteen hundred mules and

horses, and an escort of five companies of infantry and mounted

riflemen. He left the village of Rayado, on the Canadian River, in

New Mexico, on the 17th of March, and, instead of retracing the route

pursued on his winter journey, which had led him near the sources of

Grand River, one of the great forks of the Colorado, he returned along

the eastern base of the Rocky Mountain range past Long's and Pike's

Peaks. When he had reached Fontaine-qui-bouille Creek, an express

overtook him from General Garland, who commanded the Department of New

Mexico, enjoining him to halt and await reinforcements. There he camped

more than three weeks. Renewing his progress, he was overtaken, on

the 29th of April, by the same snowstorm which was so disastrous to

Lieutenant-Colonel Hoffmann on La Bonté. It was accompanied by a furious

wind, the force of which there was nothing to break. Snow fell to the

depth of three feet, and, at the very height of the storm, a part of the

mule herd stampeded and ran fifty miles before the wind, for shelter.

When the march was resumed, after an interval of several days, hundreds

of antelopes were found frozen and buried in the drifts,--a circumstance

almost unparalleled among the mountains. With this exception, nothing

occurred to obstruct the march. Captain Marcy brought with him specimens

of sand from many of the tributaries of the South Platte, which were

found, on analysis, to contain particles of gold; and within two months

after he gathered them, the same discovery, confirmed by others,

originated the emigration to that region, the progress of which now

promises the speedy birth of another Free State in the very heart of the

continent. On the 9th and 10th, Colonel Hoffmann reached the camp with

all his supply-trains; and on the following day, General Johnston issued

the welcome order to prepare for the march to Salt Lake City. A strong

detachment of infantry and artillery was detailed to garrison Fort

Bridger.

On the 13th of June, the long camp was broken up, and the army moved

forward in three columns on the route through the cañons. Although the

season was so far advanced, snow had fallen at the Fort only three days

before. The streams were swollen and turbulent with spring floods,

and difficulty was anticipated in crossing the Bear and Weber Rivers.

Material for bridging had, therefore, been prepared, and accompanied the

first column. Southwest of the Fort, at the distance of four or five

miles, a singular _butte_, the top of which is as level as the floor of

a ball-room, rises to the height of eight hundred feet above the valley

of Black's Fork, and commands a view of the entire broad plateau between

the Wind River and the Uinta and Wahsatch Ranges. Little parties of

horsemen could be seen spurring up the gullies on its almost precipitous

sides, to witness from its summit the departure of the army. The scene

was in the highest degree picturesque. Almost at their feet lay the

camp, the few tents which remained unstruck glittering like bright dots

on the wing of an insect, the whitewashed wall of the Fort reflecting

the sunshine, while stacks of turf chimneys, lodge-poles, and rubbish

marked the spots where the encampment had been abandoned. The whole

valley was in commotion. Along the strips of road were winding clumsy

baggage-trains; the regiment of dragoons was trailing in advance; the

gleam of the musket-barrels of the infantry was visible on all sides;

and every puff of the breeze that blew over the bluff was freighted with

the rumble of artillery-carriages and caissons. Here and there were

groups of half-naked Indians galloping to and fro, with fluttering

blankets, gazing at the show with the curiosity and delight of children.

The traveller who terminates his westward journey at Fort Bridger has

entered only the portal of the Rocky Mountains. Along the interval

between there and the Valley of the Great Lake, there is a panorama of

mountain-scenery that cannot be surpassed in the Tyrol. For miles and

miles in the gorges, at the season of the year when they were traversed

by the army, the road winds through thickets of alders and willows and

hawthorn-bushes, whose branches interlace and hang so low, under their

load of leaves and blossoms, as to sweep the backs of horsemen. Through

the interstices of the foliage, the sandstone cliffs that bound the

cañons are seen surrounded by flocks of twittering birds which build

their nests in the crevices of the rock. The ridges which the road

surmounts between cañon and cañon are covered with fields of luxuriant

grass and flowers, in the midst of which patches of snow still linger.

From them, in the clear noon sunshine, the broken line of the Wahsatch

and Uinta Ranges is visible along the horizon; but through the morning

and evening haze, only the tracery of their white crests can be

discerned. The valleys of the Bear and Weber Rivers are peculiarly

beautiful, the latter almost realizing the dream of the Valley of

Rasselas. Corrugated and snow-capped ridges slope backward from the

spectator, on whichever side he turns, until he wonders how and where

the swift river, rushing under its canopy of rustling cotton-woods,

finds a pathway through them.

It was into scenery like this that the troops advanced, speculating,

along each day's march, upon what obstacles they would have encountered,

had they attempted to reach the Valley during the winter. On the 14th,

an express from the Commissioners arrived at the camp on Bear River,

announcing that no resistance would be made by the Mormons, who pledged

themselves to submit to Federal authority. It was suggested, at the same

time, to General Johnston, that they apprehended ill-treatment from the

army, which might feel an exasperation natural after the privations to

which it had been subjected during the winter. To reassure them,

the General immediately issued and forwarded to Salt Lake City a

proclamation, informing them that no one should be "molested in his

person or rights, or in the peaceful pursuit of his avocations." On

the same day, Governor Cumming issued a proclamation announcing the

"restoration of peace to the Territory."

The Commissioners had reached the city on the 7th. They were received

there by the Mormon officers who commanded the few companies of militia

which constituted the garrison, and were conducted to a restaurant,

where meals were provided for them, but no lodgings; and accordingly

they slept in their ambulances. The place was deserted by everybody

except the garrison and a few individuals who were busily removing their

property. Besides these, the only beings visible in the streets were

here and there groups of half-naked Indian boys paddling in the gutters.

Almost the only sound audible was the gurgling of the City Creek.

Through the chinks of the heavy wooden portal of the Temple square,

workmen were to be seen engaged in demolishing the roofs of the

buildings within the inclosure. Over the windows of all the houses

boards were nailed; the doors were locked; the gates closed; and in many

of the gardens, crops of weeds were beginning to choke the flower-beds.

From some of the houses of the more enthusiastic Saints all the

wood-work was removed, leaving nothing standing except the bare _adobe_

walls, while a few had been burned to the ground. In front of the

tithing-office, a train of wagons was loading with grain for removal to

Provo.

The Governor arrived on the 8th, and was conducted at once to the

quarters he had occupied on his previous visit. The next day, he,

together with the Commissioners, held an interview with the two

messengers who had been sent up from Provo by Brigham Young. They

returned to Lake Utah that same night, and on the 10th, about noon,

Young, Kimball, and Wells, together with the Twelve Apostles, and twenty

or thirty Bishops, High Priests, and Elders, embracing almost all the

influential characters in the Church, rode into the city. Brigham's

mansion was thrown open and the party dined there. They called

afterwards in a body upon the Governor and the Commissioners, and made

arrangements for a conference on the following day.

The President's pardon had reached the Mormon settlements along Lake

Utah on the 6th, and the manner in which it was received by the populace

showed that they were not satisfied with the position of their

leaders. It was read from the steps of the tithing-offices, and at the

street-corners, to crowds who denounced in the fiercest language the

recital of facts set forth in its preamble. The excitement, which had

been steadily fostered by Young and Kimball ever since the commencement

of the rebellion, had amounted to a frenzy which no authority less

potent than such a hierarchy as theirs could possibly have controlled.

Nevertheless, the morning Brigham rode into Salt Lake City, the

capitulation had been preordained.

The conferences lasted through the 11th and 12th, the inflexibility of

the Commissioners securing decency of language from the Mormons, if not

decency of demeanor. All the participants, including Young himself,

expressed their sentiments in turn. The opening speech was made by one

of the Apostles, named Erastus Snow, who forgot for the moment that he

was not addressing a congregation of his brethren on a Sunday morning,

and indulged in a strain of obscene and profane remark which was checked

at once by Senator Powell. Some of the speakers broke into savage

tirades like those with which Governor Cumming was once greeted in the

Tabernacle; but these were checked by Young. There were two subjects on

which the Mormon leaders were particularly anxious, all fear of their

own trial for treason being removed. They dreaded that the army should

be quartered upon their settlements, and that the policy inaugurated

by Judge Eckels in his recent charge to the grand jury at Fort Bridger

should be pursued against polygamy. No assurances were given by the

Commissioners upon either of these subjects. They limited their action

to tendering the President's pardon, and exhorting the Mormons to accept

it. Outside the conferences, however, without the knowledge of the

Commissioners, assurances were given on both these subjects by the

Governor and the Superintendent of Indian Affairs, which proved

satisfactory to Brigham Young. The exact nature of their pledges will,

perhaps, never be disclosed; but from subsequent confessions volunteered

by the Superintendent, who appears to have acted as a tool of the

Governor through the whole affair, it seems probable that they promised

explicitly to exert their influence to quarter the army in Cache Valley,

nearly a hundred miles north of Salt Lake City, and also to procure the

removal of Judge Eckels. The news of the issue of the order for the

advance of the army reached the city on the 12th, and accelerated the

result of the conferences, which concluded that evening with a pledge on

the part of Young and his associates to submit unconditionally to

the Federal authority. During the next few days, the Commissioners,

accompanied by the Governor, travelled southward, and addressed large

audiences at Provo and Lehi, specially exhorting the people to return to

their homes in the northern settlements, assuring them that the troubles

were ended, and that they need fear no molestation of person or

property.

Whether all these proceedings--which were legitimate results of Mr.

Buchanan's policy--were consistent with the honor of the country, the

public can judge for themselves. The Commissioners certainly conducted

themselves with dignity and credit; but it is doubtful whether they ever

would have accepted their appointment, had they anticipated the nature

of the duties they would be required to perform.

The army moved slowly forward during the progress of these negotiations.

In Echo Cañon, it had an opportunity to inspect the bugbear of the

previous autumn,--the Mormon fortifications. As the cañon--which is more

than twenty miles long--approaches the Weber River, it dwindles in

width from five or six hundred yards to as many feet. Its northern side

becomes a perfect wall of rock, which rises perpendicularly to the

height of several hundred feet above the road. The southern side retains

the character of a steep mountain-slope covered with grass and stunted

bushes. Echo Creek, a narrow streamlet, with its dense fringe of

willows, fills the whole bottom between the road and the bluffs. The

first indication of approach to the fortifications was the sight of

piles of stones heaped into walls four or five feet high, pierced with

loopholes, and visible on every projecting point of the cliffs along the

northern side, from most of which a pebble could be snapped down upon

the road. Just beyond, after turning a bend in the cañon, all the

willows along the creek had been cut away, and through the cleared space

a ditch five or six feet wide and ten feet deep was dug across the

bottom. The dirt thrown from it was packed so as to form an embankment,

on which logs were so arranged that it would answer for a breastwork,

behind which riflemen could be posted under cover. At intervals of about

a hundred yards were two similar lines of ditch and breastwork, by the

first of which the road was forced to skirt the very base of a cliff

which had probably been mined. The other line was constructed just above

the mouths of two narrow gorges which enter the cañon, nearly opposite

one another, from the north and south. By the aid of these dams the

cañon might possibly have been overflowed for half a mile to the depth

of several feet, but the water would have accumulated slowly on account

of the insignificant size of the creek. Several dirt walls stretched

also across the gorges, commanding the whole of the fortifications

below. This whole system of defences possessed as little strength as

merit. It served only to confirm the impression, which by this time had

become general, that the capacity of the Mormons to resist the army had

been greatly overrated, and that a vigorous effort to penetrate to the

Valley early in the spring would inevitably have succeeded.

For nearly a mile beyond the two gorges, a chain of low hills, over

which the road runs, extends below the loftier summits on the southern

side of the cañon. The northern side becomes, in consequence, a deep

glen, as the cliffs which form its wall rise abruptly from the level of

the creek. This glen is filled with bushes, and in it, thus protected

from the wind, the Mormon militia had their winter-quarters. The huts

they occupied had been constructed by digging circular holes in the

ground, over which were piled boughs in the same manner as the poles of

an Indian lodge. Around these boughs willow-twigs were plaited, and the

entire hut was finally thatched with straw, grass, or bark. Many of

them had chimneys built of sod and stones, like those which had been

improvised at Camp Scott. An open spot, a few hundred feet below the

beginning of the glen, was the site of the head-quarters of the command.

Here the huts were built around a square, in the centre of which was

planted a tall pine flag-pole. The scenery at this point is exceedingly

picturesque. Out of a tangle of willows, alders, hawthorn, and wild

cherry-trees spring the bold sandstone cliffs, in every crevice of which

cedars and fir-trees cling to the jagged points of rock. On the other

side of the cañon a sheet of rich verdure, all summer long, rolls up

the mountain to its very summit. Down the glen ripples the little creek

underneath an arch of fragrant shrubs twined with the slender tendrils

of wild hop-vines. The whole number of huts was about one hundred and

fifty, and they could accommodate, on an average, fifteen men apiece.

The troops did not emerge from Emigration Cañon into the Salt Lake

Valley until the morning of the 26th. In the mean while, thirty or forty

civilians had reached the city from the camp, and were quartered, like

the Commissioners, in their own vehicles. The Mormons favored no one,

except the Governor and his intimate associates, with any species of

accommodation. Their demeanor was in every respect like that of a

conquered people toward foreign invaders. During the week preceding the

26th, two or three hundred of those on Lake Utah received permission

to go up to the city, and they alone, of the whole Mormon community,

witnessed the ingress of the army.

It was one of the most extraordinary scenes that have occurred in

American history. All day long, from dawn till after sunset, the troops

and trains poured through the city, the utter silence of the streets

being broken only by the music of the military bands, the monotonous

tramp of the regiments, and the rattle of the baggage-wagons. Early in

the morning, the Mormon guard had forced all their fellow-religionists

into the houses, and ordered them not to make their appearance during

the day. The numerous flags, which had been flying from staffs on the

public buildings during the previous week, were all struck. The only

visible groups of spectators were on the corners near Brigham Young's

residence, and consisted almost entirely of Gentile civilians. The

stillness was so profound, that, during the intervals between the

passage of the columns, the monotonous gurgle of the city-creek struck

on every ear. The Commissioners rode with the General's staff. The

troops crossed the Jordan and encamped two miles from the city on a

dusty meadow by the river-bank.

The orders under which General Johnston was acting directed him to

establish not more than three military posts within the Territory. One

of these was already fixed at Fort Bridger, and the question where the

others should be located was now no less important to the Mormons

than to the army. The secret of the success of Mormonism is its

exclusiveness, and of this fact the leaders of the sect are fully aware.

Accordingly, they now put forth most strenuous efforts to secure the

removal of the troops to as great a distance as possible from their

settlements. But, wholly without regard to any understanding which they

might have had with the Governor, General Johnston, after a careful

_reconnaissance_, selected Cedar Valley, on the western rim of Lake

Utah, separated from it only by a range of bluffs,--about equidistant

from Salt Lake City and Provo,--for his permanent camp. The army moved

southward from the city on the 29th, but so slowly that it did not reach

the Valley till the 6th of July. Not a field was encroached upon, not a

house molested, not a person harmed or insulted, by troops that had been

so harassed and vituperated by a people now entirely at their mercy. By

their strict subordination they entitled themselves to the respect of

the country as well as to the gratitude of the Mormons.

[To be continued.]

OUR SKATER BELLE.

Along the frozen lake she comes

In linking crescents, light and fleet;

The ice-imprisoned Undine hums

A welcome to her little feet.

I see the jaunty hat, the plume

Swerve bird-like in the joyous gale,--

The cheeks lit up to burning bloom,

The young eyes sparkling through the veil.

The quick breath parts her laughing lips,

The white neck shines through tossing curls;

Her vesture gently sways and dips,

As on she speeds in shell-like whorls.

Men stop and smile to see her go;

They gaze, they smile in pleased surprise;

They ask her name; they long to show

Some silent friendship in their eyes.

She glances not; she passes on;

Her steely footfall quicker rings;

She guesses not the benison

Which follows her on noiseless wings.

Smooth be her ways, secure her tread

Along the devious lines of life,

From grace to grace successive led,

A noble maiden, nobler wife!

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

I don't know whether our literary or professional people are more

amiable than they are in other places, but certainly quarrelling is out

of fashion among them. This could never be, if they were in the habit of

secret anonymous puffing of each other. That is the kind of underground

machinery, which manufactures false reputations and genuine hatreds. On

the other hand, I should like to know if we are not at liberty to have

a good time together, and say the pleasantest things we can think of to

each other, when any of us reaches his thirtieth or fortieth or fiftieth

or eightieth birthday.

We don't have "scenes," I warrant you, on these occasions. No "surprise"

parties! You understand these, of course. In the rural districts, where

scenic tragedy and melodrama cannot be had, as in the city, at the

expense of a quarter and a white pocket-handkerchief, emotional

excitement has to be sought in the dramas of real life. Christenings,

weddings, and funerals, especially the latter, are the main dependence;

but babies, brides, and deceased citizens cannot be had at a day's

notice. Now, then, for a surprise-party!

A bag of flour, a barrel of potatoes, some strings of onions, a basket

of apples, a big cake and many little cakes, a jug of lemonade, a purse

stuffed with bills of the more modest denominations, may, perhaps,

do well enough for the properties in one of these private theatrical

exhibitions. The minister of the parish, a tender-hearted, quiet,

hard-working man, living on a small salary, with many children,

sometimes pinched to feed and clothe them, praying fervently every day

to be blest in his "basket and store," but sometimes fearing he asks

amiss, to judge by the small returns, has the first _rôle_,--not,

however, by his own choice, but forced upon him. The minister's wife, a

sharp-eyed, unsentimental body, is first lady; the remaining parts by

the rest of the family. If they only had a play-bill, it would run

thus:--

ON TUESDAY NEXT

WILL BE PRESENTED

THE AFFECTING SCENE

CALLED

THE SURPRISE-PARTY,

OR

THE OVERCOME FAMILY;

WITH THE FOLLOWING STRONG CAST OF CHARACTERS:

_The Rev. Mr. Overcome_, by the Clergyman of this Parish.

_Mrs. Overcome_, by his estimable lady.

_Masters Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John Overcome_.

_Misses Dorcas, Tabitha, Rachel, and Hannah Overcome_, by their

interesting children.

_Peggy_, by the female help.

The poor man is really grateful;--it is a most welcome and unexpected

relief. He tries to express his thanks,--his voice falters,--he

chokes,--and bursts into tears. _That_ is the great effect of the

evening. The sharp-sighted lady cries a little with one eye, and counts

the strings of onions, and the rest of the things, with the other. The

children stand ready for a spring at the apples. The female help weeps

after the noisy fashion of untutored handmaids.

Now this is all very well as charity, but do let the kind visitors

remember they get their money's worth. If you pay a quarter for _dry

crying_, done by a second-rate actor, how much ought you to pay for real

hot, wet tears, out of the honest eyes of a gentleman who is not acting,

but sobbing in earnest?

All I meant to say, when I began, was, that this was _not_ a

surprise-party where I read these few lines that follow:--

We will not speak of years to-night;

For what have years to bring,

But larger floods of love and light

And sweeter songs to sing?

We will not drown in wordy praise

The kindly thoughts that rise;

If friendship owns one tender phrase,

He reads it in our eyes.

We need not waste our schoolboy art

To gild this notch of time;

Forgive me, if my wayward heart

Has throbbed in artless rhyme.

Enough for him the silent grasp

That knits us hand in hand,

And he the bracelet's radiant clasp

That locks our circling band.

Strength to his hours of manly toil!

Peace to his starlit dreams!

Who loves alike the furrowed soil,

The music-haunted streams!

Sweet smiles to keep forever bright

The sunshine on his lips,

And faith, that sees the ring of light

Round Nature's last eclipse!

----One of our boarders has been talking in such strong language that I

am almost afraid to report it. However, as he seems to be really honest

and is so very sincere in his local prejudices, I don't believe anybody

will be very angry with him.

It is here, Sir! right here!--said the little deformed gentleman,--in

this old new city of Boston,--this remote provincial corner of a

provincial nation, that the Battle of the Standard is fighting, and was

fighting before we were born, and will be fighting when we are dead

and gone,--please God! The _battle_ goes on everywhere throughout

civilization; but here, here, here! is the broad white flag flying which

proclaims, first of all, peace and good-will to men, and, next to

that, the absolute, unconditional spiritual liberty of each individual

immortal soul! The three-hilled city against the seven-hilled-city! That

is it, Sir,--nothing less than that; and if you know what that means, I

don't think you'll ask for anything more. I swear to you, Sir, I believe

that these two centres of civilization are just exactly the two points

that close the circuit in the battery of our planetary intelligence! And

I believe there are spiritual eyes looking out from Uranus and unseen

Neptune,--ay, Sir, from the systems of Sirius and Arcturus and

Aldebaran, and as far as that faint stain of sprinkled worlds confluent

in the distance that we call the nebula of Orion,--looking on, Sir, with

what organs I know not, to see which are going to melt in that fiery

fusion, the accidents and hindrances of humanity or man himself,

Sir,--the stupendous abortion, the illustrious failure that he is,

if the three-hilled city does not ride down and trample out the

seven-hilled city!

----Steam's up!--said the young man John, so called, in a low

tone.--Three hundred and sixty-five tons to the square inch. Let him

blow her off, or he'll bu'st his b'iler.

The divinity-student took it calmly, only whispering that he thought

there was a little confusion of images between a galvanic battery and a

charge of cavalry.

But the Koh-i-noor--the gentleman, you remember, with a very large

_diamond_ in his shirt-front--laughed his scornful laugh, and made as if

to speak.

Sail in, Metropolis!--said that same young man John, by name. And then,

in a lower tone, not meaning to be heard,--Now, then, Ma'am Allen!

But he _was_ heard,--and the Koh-i-noor's face turned so white with

rage, that his blue-black moustache and beard looked fearful, seen

against it. He grinned with wrath, and caught at a tumbler, as if

he would have thrown it or its contents at the speaker. The young

Marylander fixed his clear, steady eye upon him, and laid his hand on

his arm, carelessly almost, but the Jewel found it was held so that he

could not move it. It was of no use. The youth was his master in muscle,

and in that deadly Indian hug in which men wrestle with their eyes;

--over in five seconds, but breaks one of their two backs, and is good

for three-score years and ten;--one trial enough,--settles the whole

matter,--just as when two feathered songsters of the barnyard, game and

dunghill, come together,--after a jump or two at each other, and a few

sharp kicks, there is the end of it; and it is, _Après vous, Monsieur_,

in all the social relations with the beaten party for all the rest of

his days.

I cannot philosophically account for the Koh-i-noor's wrath. For though

a cosmetic is sold, bearing the name of the lady to whom reference

was made by the young person John, yet, as it is publicly asserted in

respectable prints that this cosmetic is _not a dye_, I see no reason

why he should have felt offended by any suggestion that he was indebted

to it or its authoress. I have no doubt that there are certain

exceptional complexions to which the purple tinge, above alluded to, is

natural. Nature is fertile in variety. I saw an albiness in London once,

for six-pence, (including the inspection of a stuffed boa-constrictor,)

who looked as if she had been boiled in milk. A young Hottentot of my

acquaintance had his hair all in little pellets of the size of marrowfat

peas. One of my own classmates has undergone a singular change of late

years,--his hair losing its original tint, and getting a remarkable

discolored look; and another has ceased to cultivate any hair at all

over the vertex or crown of the head. So I am perfectly willing to

believe that the purple-black of the Koh-i-noor's moustache and whiskers

is constitutional and not pigmentary. But I can't think why he got so

angry.

The intelligent reader will understand that all this pantomime of the

threatened onslaught and its suppression passed so quickly that it was

all over by the time the other end of the table found out there was a

disturbance; just as a man chopping wood half a mile off may be seen

resting on his axe at the instant you hear the last blow he struck. So

you will please to observe that the Little Gentleman was not interrupted

during the time implied by these _ex-post-facto_ remarks of mine, but

for some ten or fifteen seconds only.

He did not seem to mind the interruption at all, for he started again.

The "Sir" of his harangue was no doubt addressed to myself more than

anybody else, but he often uses it in discourse as if he were talking

with some imaginary opponent.

----America, Sir,--he exclaimed,--is the only place where man is

full-grown!

He straightened himself up, as he spoke, standing on the top round of

his high chair, I suppose, and so presented the larger part of his

little figure to the view of the boarders.

It was next to impossible to keep from laughing. The commentary was so

strange an illustration of the text!

I thought it was time to put in a word; for I have lived in foreign

parts, and am more or less cosmopolitan.

I doubt if we have more practical freedom in America than they have in

England,--I said.--An Englishman thinks as he likes in religion and

politics. Mr. Martineau speculates as freely as ever Dr. Channing did,

and Mr. Bright is as independent as Mr. Seward.

Sir,--said he,--it isn't what a man thinks or says, but when and where

and to whom he thinks and says it. A man with a flint and steel striking

sparks over a wet blanket is one thing, and striking them over a

tinder-box is another. The free Englishman is born under protest; he

lives and dies under protest,--a tolerated, but not a welcome fact. Is

not _free-thinker_ a term of reproach in England? The same idea in

the soul of an Englishman who struggled up to it and still holds it

_antagonistically_, and in the soul of an American to whom it is

congenital and spontaneous, and often unrecognized, except as an element

blended with _all_ his thoughts, a natural movement, like the drawing of

his breath or the beating of his heart, is a very different thing. You

may teach a quadruped to walk on his hind legs, but he is always wanting

to be on all-fours. Nothing that can be taught a growing youth is like

the atmospheric knowledge he breathes from his infancy upwards. The

American baby sucks in freedom with the milk of the breast at which he

hangs.

----That's a good joke,--said the young fellow John,--considerin' it

commonly belongs to a female Paddy.

I thought--I will not be certain--that Little Boston winked, as if he

had been hit somewhere,--as I have no doubt Dr. Darwin did when the

_wooden-spoon_ suggestion upset his theory about why, etc. If he winked,

however, he did not dodge.

A lively comment!--he said.--But Rome, in her great founder, sucked the

blood of empire out of the dugs of a brute, Sir! The Milesian wet-nurse

is only a convenient vessel through which the American infant gets the

life-blood of this virgin soil, Sir, that is making man over again, on

the sunset pattern! You don't think what we are doing and going to

do here. Why, Sir, while commentators are bothering themselves with

interpretation of prophecies, _we have got_ the new heavens and the new

earth over us and under us! Was there ever anything in Italy, I should

like to know, like a Boston sunset?

----This time there was a laugh, and the little man himself almost

smiled.

Yes,--Boston sunsets;--perhaps they're as good in some other places,

but I know 'em best here. Anyhow, the American skies are different from

anything they see in the Old World. Yes, and the rocks are different,

and the soil is different, and everything that comes out of the soil,

from grass up to Indians, is different. And now that the provisional

races are dying out----

----What do you mean by the _provisional_ races, Sir?--said the

divinity-student, interrupting him.

Why, the aboriginal bipeds, to be sure,--he answered,--the red-crayon

sketch of humanity laid on the canvas before the colors for the real

manhood were ready.

I hope they will come to something yet,--said the divinity-student.

Irreclaimable, Sir,--irreclaimable!--said the little

gentleman.--Cheaper to breed white men than domesticate a nation of red

ones. When you can get the bitter out of the partridge's thigh, you

can make an enlightened commonwealth of Indians. A provisional race,

Sir,--nothing more. Exhaled carbonic acid for the use of vegetation,

kept down the bears and catamounts, enjoyed themselves in scalping and

being scalped, and then passed away or are passing away, according to

the programme.

Well, Sir, these races dying out, the white man has to acclimate

himself. It takes him a good while; but he will come all right

by-and-by, Sir,--as sound as a woodchuck,--as sound as a musquash!

A new nursery, Sir, with Lake Superior and Huron and all the rest of

'em for wash-basins! A new race, and a whole new world for the new-born

human soul to work in! And Boston is the brain of it, and has been any

time these hundred years! That's all I claim for Boston,--that it is the

thinking centre of the continent, and therefore of the planet.

----And the grand emporium of modesty,--said the divinity-student, a

little mischievously.

Oh, don't talk to me of modesty!--answered Little Boston,--I'm past

that! There isn't a thing that was ever said or done in Boston, from

pitching the tea overboard to the last ecclesiastical lie it tore into

tatters and flung into the dock, that wasn't thought very indelicate by

some fool or tyrant or bigot, and all the entrails of commercial

and spiritual conservatism are twisted into colics as often as this

revolutionary brain of ours has a fit of thinking come over it.--No,

Sir,--show me any other place that is, or was since the megalosaurus

has died out, where wealth and social influence are so fairly divided

between the stationary and the progressive classes! Show me any

other place where every other drawing-room is not a chamber of the

Inquisition, with papas and mammas for inquisitors,--and the cold

shoulder, instead of the "dry pan and the gradual fire," the punishment

of "heresy"!

----We think Baltimore is a pretty civilized kind of a village,--said

the young Marylander, good-naturedly.--But I suppose you can't

forgive it for always keeping a little ahead of Boston in point of

numbers,--tell the truth now. Are we not the centre of something?

Ah, indeed, to be sure you are. You are the gastronomic metropolis

of the Union. Why don't you put a canvas-back duck on the top of the

Washington column? Why don't you get that lady off from Battle Monument

and plant a terrapin in her place? Why will you ask for other glories

when you have soft crabs? No, Sir,--you live too well to think as hard

as we do in Boston. Logic comes to us with the salt-fish of Cape Ann;

rhetoric is born of the beans of Beverly; but _you_--if you open your

mouths to speak, Nature stops them with a fat oyster, or offers a slice

of the breast of your divine bird, and silences all your aspirations.

And what of Philadelphia?--said the Marylander.

Oh, Philadelphia?--Waterworks,--killed by the Croton and Cochituate;--

Ben Franklin,--borrowed from Boston;--David Rittenhouse,--made an

orrery;--Benjamin Rush,--made a medical system:--both interesting to

antiquarians;--great Red-river raft of medical students,--spontaneous

generation of professors to match;--more widely known through the

Moyamensing hose-company, and the Wistar parties;--for geological

section of social strata, go to _The Club_.--Good place to live

in,--first-rate market,--tip-top peaches.--What do we know about

Philadelphia, except that the engine-companies are always shooting each

other?

And what do you say to New York?--asked the Koh-i-noor?

A great city, Sir,--replied Little Boston,--a very opulent, splendid

city. A point of transit of much that is remarkable, and of permanence

for much that is respectable. A great money-centre. San Francisco with

the mines above-ground,--and some of 'em under the sidewalks. I have

seen next to nothing _grandiose_, out of New York, in all our cities. It

makes 'em all look paltry and petty. Has many elements of civilization.

May stop where Venice did, though, for aught we know.--The order of its

development is just this:--Wealth; architecture; upholstery; painting;

sculpture. Printing, as a mechanical art,--just as Nicholas Jenson

and the Aldi, who were scholars too, made Venice renowned for it.

Journalism, which is the accident of business and crowded populations,

in great perfection. Venice got as far as Titian and Paul Veronese

and Tintoretto,--great colorists, mark you, magnificent on the

flesh-and-blood side of Art,--but look over to Florence and see who lie

in Santa Croce, and ask out of whose loins Dante sprung!

Oh, yes, to be sure, Venice built her Ducal Palace, and her Church of

St. Mark, and her Casa d' Oro, and the rest of her golden houses; and

Venice had great pictures and good music; and Venice had a Golden Book,

in which all the large tax-payers had their names written;--but all

that did not make Venice the brain of Italy.

I tell you what, Sir,--with all these magnificent appliances of

civilization, it is time we began to hear something from the _jeunesse

dorée_ whose names are on the Golden Book of our sumptuous,

splendid, marble-palaced Venice,--something in the higher walks of

literature,--something in the councils of the nation. Plenty of Art, I

grant you, Sir; now, then, for vast libraries, and for mighty scholars

and thinkers and statesmen,--five for every Boston one, as the

population is to ours,--_ten_ to one more properly, in virtue of

centralizing attraction as _the_ alleged metropolis,--and not call our

people provincials, and have to come begging to us to write the lives of

Hendrik Hudson and Gouverneur Morris!

----The little gentleman was on his hobby, exalting his own city at the

expense of every other place. I don't suppose he had been in either of

the cities he had been talking about. I was just going to say something

to sober him down, if I could, when the young Marylander spoke up.

Come, now,--he said,--what's the use of these comparisons? Didn't I

hear this gentleman saying, the other day, that every American owns all

America? If you have really got more brains in Boston than other folks,

as you seem to think, who hates you for it, except a pack of scribbling

fools? If I like Broadway better than Washington Street, what then? I

own them both, as much as anybody owns either. I am an American,--and

wherever I look up and see the stars and stripes overhead, that is home

to me!

He spoke, and looked up as if he heard the emblazoned folds crackling

over him in the breeze. We all looked up involuntarily, as if we should

see the national flag by so doing. The sight of the dingy ceiling and

the gas-fixture depending therefrom dispelled the illusion.

Bravo! bravo!--said the venerable gentleman on the other side of the

table.--Those are the sentiments of Washington's Farewell Address.

Nothing better than that since the last chapter in Revelations.

Five-and-forty years ago there used to be Washington societies, and

little boys used to walk in processions, each little boy having a copy

of the Address, bound in red, hung round his neck by a ribbon. Why don't

they now? Why don't they now? I saw enough of hating each other in the

old Federal times; now let's love each other, I say,--let's love each

other, and not try to make it out that there isn't any place fit to live

in except the one we happen to be born in.

It dwarfs the mind, I think,--said I,--to feed it on any localism. The

full stature of manhood is shrivelled----

The color burst up into my cheeks. What was I saying,--I, who would not

for the world have pained our unfortunate little boarder by an allusion?

I will go,--he said,--and made a movement with his left arm to let

himself down from his high chair.

No,--no,--he doesn't mean it,--you must not go,--said a kind voice next

him; and a soft, white hand was laid upon his arm.

Iris, my dear!--exclaimed another voice, as of a female, in accents that

might be considered a strong atmospheric solution of duty with very

little flavor of grace.

She did not move for this address, and there was a _tableau_ that lasted

some seconds. For the young girl, in the glory of half-blown womanhood,

and the dwarf, the cripple, the misshapen little creature covered with

Nature's insults, looked straight into each other's eyes.

Perhaps no handsome young woman had ever looked at him so in his life.

Certainly the young girl never had looked into eyes that reached

into her soul as these did. It was not that they were in themselves

supernaturally bright,--but there was the sad fire in them that flames

up from the soul of one who looks on the beauty of woman without hope,

but, alas! not without emotion. To him it seemed as if those amber gates

had been translucent as the brown water of a mountain-brook, and through

them he had seen dimly into a virgin wilderness, only waiting for the

sunrise of a great passion for all its buds to blow and all its bowers

to ring with melody.

That is my image, of course,--not his. It was not a simile that was

in his mind, or is in anybody's at such a moment,--it was a pang of

wordless passion, and then a silent, inward moan.

A lady's wish,--he said, with a certain gallantry of manner,--makes

slaves of us all.--And Nature, who is kind to all her children, and

never leaves the smallest and saddest of all her human failures without

one little comfit of self-love at the bottom of his poor ragged

pocket,--Nature suggested to him that he had turned his sentence well;

and he fell into a reverie, in which the old thoughts that were always

hovering just outside the doors guarded by Common Sense, and watching

for a chance to squeeze in, knowing perfectly well they would be

ignominiously kicked out again as soon as Common Sense saw them, flocked

in pellmell,--misty, fragmentary, vague, half-ashamed of themselves, but

still shouldering up against his inner consciousness till it warmed with

their contact:--John Wilkes's--the ugliest man's in England--saying,

that with half-an-hour's start he would cut out the handsomest man

in all the land in any woman's good graces; Cadenus--old and

savage--leading captive Stella and Vanessa; and then the stray line of

a ballad,--"And a winning tongue had he,"--as much as to say, it isn't

looks, after all, but cunning words, that win our Eves over,--just as

of old, when it was the worst-looking brute of the lot that got our

grandmother to listen to his stuff, and so did the mischief.

Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating

man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the

second by our handling of it,--we rehearse it, I say, by our own

hearth-stones, with the _cold_ poker as our club, and the exercise is

easy. But when we come to real life, the poker is _in the fire_, and,

ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;--lucky for

us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our

hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or

silent cry!

--I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character

and feeling I am winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in

a few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for

me from day to day. Chance has thrown together at the table with me a

number of persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look

on them, but, if I can, through them. You can get any man's or woman's

secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look

patiently on them long enough. Nature is always applying her reagents

to character, if you will take the pains to watch her. Our studies

of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor's

triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in

organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant

object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our

observation are tending; then another:--and so we construct our first

triangle. Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is

easy. _A_ wants to die worth half a million. Good. _B_ (female) wants to

catch him,--and outlive him. All right. Minor details at our leisure.

What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your

misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of

consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike

to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space,

and shut the pamphlet you hold with your fingers between the pages.--Oh,

that is it!

What a confessional I have been sitting at, with the inward ear of my

soul open, as the multitudinous whisper of my involuntary confidants

came back to me like the reduplicated echo of a cry among the craggy

hills!

At the house of a friend where I once passed the night was one of those

stately upright cabinet-desks and cases of drawers which were not rare

in prosperous families during the last century. It had held the clothes

and the books and the papers of generation after generation. The hands

that opened its drawers had grown withered, shrivelled, and at last been

folded in death. The children that played with the lower handles had got

tall enough to open the desk,--to reach the upper shelves behind the

folding-doors,--grown bent after a while,--and then followed those who

had gone before, and left the old cabinet to be ransacked by a new

generation.

A boy of ten or twelve was looking at it a few years ago, and, being a

quick-witted fellow, saw that all the space was not accounted for by the

smaller drawers in the part beneath the lid of the desk. Prying about

with busy eyes and fingers, he at length came upon a spring, on pressing

which, a hidden drawer flew from its hiding-place. It had never been

opened but by the maker. The mahogany shavings and dust were lying in it

as when the artisan closed it,--and when I saw it, it was as fresh as if

that day finished.

Is there not one little drawer in your soul, my sweet reader, which no

hand but yours has ever opened, and which none that have known you seem

to have suspected? What does it hold?--A sin?--I hope not.

What a strange thing an old dead sin laid away in a secret drawer of the

soul is! Must it some time or other be moistened with tears, until it

comes to life again and begins to stir in our consciousness,--as the dry

wheel-animalcule, looking like a grain of dust, becomes alive, if it is

wet with a drop of water?

Or is it a passion? There are plenty of withered men and women walking

about the streets who have the secret drawer in their hearts, which,

if it were opened, would show as fresh as it was when they were in the

flush of youth and its first trembling emotions. What it held will,

perhaps, never be known, until they are dead and gone, and some curious

eye lights on an old yellow letter with the fossil footprints of the

extinct passion trodden thick all over it.

There is not a boarder at our table, I firmly believe, excepting the

young girl, who has not a story of the heart to tell, if one could only

get the secret drawer open. Even this arid female, whose armor of black

bombazine looks stronger against the shafts of love than any cuirass of

triple brass, has had her sentimental history, if I am not mistaken. I

will tell you my reason for suspecting it.

Like many other old women, she shows a great nervousness and

restlessness whenever I venture to express any opinion upon a class of

subjects which can hardly be said to belong to any man or set of men

as their strictly private property,--not even to the clergy, or the

newspapers commonly called "religious." Now, although it would be a

great luxury to me to obtain my opinions by contract, ready-made, from a

professional man, and although I have a constitutional kindly feeling

to all sorts of good people which would make me happy to agree with all

their beliefs, if that were possible, still I must have an idea, now and

then, as to the meaning of life; and though the only condition of peace

in this world is to have no ideas, or, at least, not to express them,

with reference to such subjects, I can't afford to pay quite so much as

that even for peace.

I find that there is a very prevalent opinion among the dwellers on the

shores of Sir Isaac Newton's Ocean of Truth, that _salt fish_, which

have been taken from it a good while ago, split open, cured and dried,

are the only proper and allowable food for reasonable people. I

maintain, on the other hand, that there are a number of live fish still

swimming in it, and that every one of us has a right to see if he cannot

catch some of them. Sometimes I please myself with the idea that I have

landed an actual living fish, small, perhaps, but with rosy gills and

silvery scales. Then I find the consumers of nothing but the salted and

dried article insist that it is poisonous, simply because it is alive,

and cry out to people not to touch it. I have not found, however, that

people mind them much.

The poor boarder in bombazine is my dynamometer. I try every

questionable proposition on her. If she winces, I must be prepared for

an outcry from the other old women. I frightened her, the other day, by

saying that _faith, as an intellectual state, was self-reliance_, which,

if you have a metaphysical turn, you will find is not so much of a

paradox as it sounds at first. So she sent me a book to read which was

to cure me of that error. It was an old book, and looked as if it had

not been opened for a long time. What should drop out of it, one day,

but a small heart-shaped paper, containing a lock of that straight,

coarse, brown hair which sets off the sharp faces of so many

thin-flanked, large-handed bumpkins? I read upon the paper the name

"Hiram."--Love! love! love!--everywhere! everywhere!--under diamonds and

Attleboro' "jewelry,"--lifting the marrowy camel's-hair, and rustling

even the black bombazine!--No, no,--I think she never was pretty, but

she was young once, and wore bright ginghams, and, perhaps, gay merinos.

We shall find that the poor little crooked man has been in love, or is

in love, or will be in love before we have done with him, for aught that

I know!

Romance! Was there ever a boarding-house in the world where the

seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background,

where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some

upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out

passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of

your neighbor, and no more think of the real life that underlies this

despoiled and dismantled womanhood than you think of a stone trilobite

as having once been full of the juices and the nervous thrills of

throbbing and self-conscious being. There is a wild creature under that

long yellow pin which serves as brooch for the bombazine cuirass,--a

wild creature, which I venture to say would leap in his cage, if

I should stir him, quiet as you think him. A heart which has been

domesticated by matrimony and maternity is as tranquil as a tame

bulfinch; but a wild heart which has never been fairly broken in

flutters fiercely long after you think time has tamed it down,--like

that purple finch I had the other day, which could not be approached

without such palpitations and frantic flings against the bars of his

cage, that I had to send him back and get a little orthodox canary

which had learned to be quiet and never mind the wires or his keeper's

handling. I will tell you my wicked, but involuntary experiment on the

wild heart under the faded bombazine.

Was there ever a person in the room with you, marked by any special

weakness or peculiarity, with whom you could be two hours and not touch

the infirm spot? I confess the most frightful tendency to do just this

thing. If a man has a brogue, I am sure to catch myself imitating it.

If another is lame, I follow him, or, worse than that, go before him,

limping. I could never meet an Irish gentleman--if it had been the Duke

of Wellington himself--without stumbling upon the word "Paddy,"--which I

use rarely in my common talk.

I have been worried to know whether this was owing to some innate

depravity of disposition on my part, some malignant torturing instinct,

which, under different circumstances, might have made a Fijian

anthropophagus of me, or to some law of thought for which I was not

answerable. It is, I am convinced, a kind of physical fact like

_endosmosis_, with which some of you are acquainted. A thin film of

politeness separates the unspoken and unspeakable current of thought

from the stream of conversation. After a time one begins to soak through

and mingle with the other.

We were talking about names, one day. Was there ever anything,--I

said,--like the Yankee for inventing the most uncouth, pretentious,

detestable appellations,--inventing or finding them,--since the time of

Praise-God Barebones? I heard a country-boy once talking of another whom

he called _Elpit_, as I understood him. _Elbridge_ is common enough, but

this sounded oddly. It seems the boy was christened _Lord Pitt_,--and

called, for convenience, as above. I have heard a charming little girl,

belonging to an intelligent family in the country, called _Anges_

invariably; doubtless intended for Agnes. Names are cheap. How can a

man name an innocent new-born child, that never did him any harm,

_Hiram_?--The poor relation, or whatever she is, in bombazine, turned

toward me, but I was stupid, and went on.--To think of a man going

through life saddled with such an abominable name as that!--The poor

relation grew very uneasy.--I continued; for I never thought of all this

till afterwards.--I knew one young fellow, a good many years ago, by the

name of Hiram--

--What's got into you, Cousin,--said our landlady,--to look so?--There!

you've upset your teacup!

It suddenly occurred to me what I had been doing, and I saw the poor

woman had her hand at her throat; she was half-choking with the

"hysteric ball,"--a very odd symptom, as you know, which nervous women

often complain of. What business had I to be trying experiments on this

forlorn old soul? I had a great deal better be watching that young girl.

Ah, the young girl! I am sure that she can hide nothing from me. Her

skin is so transparent that one can almost count her heart-beats by the

flushes they send into her cheeks. She does not seem to be shy, either.

I think she does not know enough of danger to be timid. She seems to

me like one of those birds that travellers tell of, found in remote,

uninhabited islands, who, having never received any wrong at the hand

of man, show no alarm at and hardly any particular consciousness of his

presence.

The first thing will be to see how she and our little deformed gentleman

get along together; for, as I have told you, they sit side by side. The

next thing will be to keep an eye on the duenna,--the "Model" and

so forth, as the white-neckcloth called her. The intention of that

estimable lady is, I understand, to launch her and leave her. I suppose

there is no help for it, and I don't doubt this young lady knows how to

take care of herself, but I do not like to see young girls turned loose

in boarding-houses. Look here now! There is that jewel of his race, whom

I have called for convenience the Koh-i-noor, (you understand it

is quite out of the question for me to use the family names of our

boarders, unless I want to get into trouble,)--I say, the gentleman with

the _diamond_ is looking very often and very intently, it seems to me,

down toward the farther corner of the table, where sits our amber-eyed

blonde. The landlady's daughter does not look pleased, it seems to me,

at this, nor at those other attentions which the gentleman referred to

has, as I have learned, pressed upon the newly-arrived young person. The

landlady made a communication to me, within a few days after the arrival

of Miss Iris, which I will repeat to the best of my remembrance.

He, (the person I have been speaking of,)--she said,--seemed to

be kinder hankerin' round after that young woman. It had hurt her

daughter's feelin's a good deal, that the gentleman she was a-keepin'

company with should be offerin' tickets and tryin' to send presents to

them that he'd never know'd till just a little spell ago,--and he as

good as merried, so far as solemn promises went, to as respectable a

young lady, if she did say so, as any there was round, whosomever they

might be.

Tickets! presents!--said I.--What tickets, what presents has he had the

impertinence to be offering to that young lady?

Tickets to the Museum,--said the landlady.--There is them that's glad

enough to go to the Museum, when tickets is given 'em; but some of 'em

ha'n't had a ticket sence Cenderilla was played,--and now he must be

offerin' 'em to this ridiculous young paintress, or whatever she is,

that's come to make more mischief than her board's worth. But it a'n't

her fault,--said the landlady, relenting;--and that aunt of hers, or

whatever she is, served him right enough.

Why, what did she do?

Do? Why, she took it up in the tongs and dropped it out o' window.

Dropped? dropped what?--I said.

Why, the _soap_,--said the landlady.

It appeared that the Koh-i-noor, to ingratiate himself, had sent an

elegant package of perfumed soap, directed to Miss Iris, as a delicate

expression of a lively sentiment of admiration, and that, after having

met with the unfortunate treatment referred to, it was picked up by

Master Benjamin Franklin, who appropriated it, rejoicing, and indulged

in most unheard-of and inordinate ablutions in consequence, so that his

hands were a frequent subject of maternal congratulation, and he smelt

like a civet-cat for weeks after his great acquisition.

After watching daily for a time, I think I can see clearly into the

relation which is growing up between the little gentleman and the young

lady. She shows a tenderness to him that I can't help being interested

in. If he was her crippled child, instead of being more than old enough

to be her father, she could not treat him more kindly. The landlady's

daughter said, the other day, she believed that girl was settin' her cap

for Little Boston.

Some of them young folks is very artful,--said her mother,--and there is

them that would merry Lazarus, if he'd only picked up crumbs enough.

I don't think, though, this is one of that sort; she's kinder

child-like,--said the landlady,--and maybe never had any dolls to play

with; for they say her folks was poor before Ma'am undertook to see to

her teachin' and board her and clothe her.

I could not help overhearing this conversation. "Board her and clothe

her!"--speaking of such a young creature! Oh, dear!--Yes,--she must

be fed,--just like Bridget, maid-of-all-work at this establishment.

Somebody must pay for it. Somebody has a right to watch her and see how

much it takes to "keep" her, and growl at her, if she has too good an

appetite. Somebody has a right to keep an eye on her and take care that

she does not dress too prettily. No mother to see her own youth over

again in those fresh features and rising reliefs of half-sculptured

womanhood, and, seeing its loveliness, forget her lessons of

neutral-tinted propriety, and open the cases that hold her own ornaments

to find her a necklace or a bracelet or a pair of earrings,--those

golden lamps that light up the deep, shadowy dimples on the cheeks of

young beauties,--swinging in a semi-barbaric splendor that carries the

wild fancy to Abyssinian queens and musky Odalisques! I don't believe

any woman has utterly given up the great firm of Mundus & Co., so long

as she wears earrings.

I think Iris loves to hear the little gentleman talk. She smiles

sometimes at his vehement statements, but never laughs at him. When he

speaks to her, she keeps her eye always steadily upon him. This may be

only natural good-breeding, so to speak, but it is worth noticing.

I have often observed that vulgar persons, and public audiences of

inferior collective intelligence, have this in common: the least thing

draws off their minds, when you are speaking to them. I love this

young creature's rapt attention to her diminutive neighbor while he is

speaking.

He is evidently pleased with it. For a day or two after she came, he was

silent and seemed nervous and excited. Now he is fond of getting the

talk into his own hands, and is obviously conscious that he has at least

one interested listener. Once or twice I have seen marks of special

attention to personal adornment,--a ruffled shirt-bosom, one day, and a

diamond pin in it,--not so _very_ large as the Koh-i-noor's, but more

lustrous. I mentioned the death's-head ring he wears on his right hand.

I was attracted by a very handsome red stone, a ruby or carbuncle or

something of the sort, to notice his left hand, the other day. It is a

handsome hand, and confirms my suspicion that the cast mentioned was

taken from his arm. After all, this is just what I should expect. It is

not very uncommon to see the upper limbs, or one of them, running away

with the whole strength, and, therefore, with the whole beauty, which we

should never have noticed, if it had been divided equally between all

four extremities. If it is so, of course he is proud of his one strong

and beautiful arm; that is human nature. But he does not make himself

ridiculous, at any rate, as people who have any one showy point are apt

to do,--especially dentists with handsome teeth, who always smile back

to their last molars.

Sitting, as he does, next to the young girl, and next but one to the

calm lady who has her in charge, he cannot help seeing their relations

to each other.

That is an admirable woman, Sir,--he said to me one day, as we sat alone

at the table after breakfast,--an admirable woman, Sir,--and I hate her.

Of course, I begged an explanation.