How was I to be greeted by the Mormons? That was rather an
exciting question with me. I had been told on the plains that a
certain humorous sketch of mine (written some years before) had
greatly incensed the Saints, and a copy of the Sacramento "Union"
newspaper had a few days before fallen into my hands in which a
Salt Lake correspondent quite clearly intimated that my reception
at the new Zion might be unpleasantly warm. I ate my dinner
moodily and sent out for some cigars. The venerable clerk brought
me six. They cost only two dollars. They were procured at a store
near by. The Salt Lake House sells neither cigars nor liquors.
I smoke in my room, having no heart to mingle with the people in
the office.
Dr. Hingston "thanks God he never wrote against the Mormons," and
goes out in search of a brother Englishman. Comes back at night
and says there is a prejudice against me. Advises me to keep in.
Has heard that the Mormons thirst for my blood and are on the
lookout for me.
Under these circumstances I keep in.
The next day is Sunday, and we go to the Tabernacle, in the
morning. The Tabernacle is located on -- street, and is a long
rakish building of adobe, capable of seating some twenty-five
hundred persons. There is a wide platform and a rather large
pulpit at one end of the building, and at the other end is another
platform for the choir. A young Irishman of the name of Sloan
preaches a sensible sort of discourse, to which a Presbyterian
could hardly have objected. Last night this same Mr. Sloan enacted
a character in a rollicking Irish farce at the theatre! And he
played it well, I was told; not so well, of course, as the great
Dan Bryant could; but I fancy he was more at home in the Mormon
pulpit than Daniel would have been.
The Mormons, by the way, are preeminently an amusement-loving
people, and the Elders pray for the success of their theatre with
as much earnestness as they pray for anything else. The
congregation doesn't startle us. It is known, I fancy, that the
heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and the attendance is
slim. There are no ravishingly beautiful women present, and no
positively ugly ones. The men are fair to middling. They will
never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor shut up in jail
for their homeliness.
There are some good voices in the choir to-day, but the orchestral
accompaniment is unusually slight. Sometimes they introduce a full
brass and string band in Church. Brigham Young says the devil has
monopolized the good music long enough, and it is high time the
Lord had a portion of it. Therefore trombones are tooted on
Sundays in Utah as well as on other days; and there are some
splendid musicians there. The Orchestra in Brigham Young's theatre
is quite equal to any in Broadway. There is a youth in Salt Lake
City (I forget his name) who plays the cornet like a North American
angel.
Mr. Stenhouse relieves me of any anxiety I had felt in regard to
having my swan-like throat cut by the Danites, but thinks my
wholesale denunciation of a people I had never seen was rather
hasty. The following is the paragraph to which the Saints
objected. It occurs in an "Artemus Ward" paper on Brigham Young,
written some years ago:
"I girded up my Lions and fled the Seen. I packt up my duds and
left Salt Lake, which is a 2nd Soddum and Germorer, inhabited by as
theavin' & onprincipled a set of retchis as ever drew Breth in eny
spot on the Globe."
I had forgotten all about this, and as Elder Stenhouse read it to
me "my feelings may be better imagined than described," to use
language I think I have heard before. I pleaded, however, that it
was a purely burlesque sketch, and that this strong paragraph
should not be interpreted literally at all. The Elder didn't seem
to see it in that light, but we parted pleasantly.