We had a fine supper, of the freshest meats and fowls and
vegetables—a great variety and as great abundance. We walked
about the streets some, afterward, and glanced in at shops and
stores; and there was fascination in surreptitiously staring at
every creature we took to be a Mormon. This was fairy-land to us,
to all intents and purposes—a land of enchantment, and goblins,
and awful mystery. We felt a curiosity to ask every child how
many mothers it had, and if it could tell them apart; and we
experienced a thrill every time a dwelling-house door opened and
shut as we passed, disclosing a glimpse of human heads and backs
and shoulders—for we so longed to have a good satisfying look at
a Mormon family in all its comprehensive ampleness, disposed in
the customary concentric rings of its home circle.
By and by the Acting Governor of the Territory introduced us
to other “Gentiles,” and we spent a sociable hour with them.
“Gentiles” are people who are not Mormons. Our fellow-passenger,
Bemis, took care of himself, during this part of the evening, and
did not make an overpowering success of it, either, for he came
into our room in the hotel about eleven o’clock, full of
cheerfulness, and talking loosely, disjointedly and
indiscriminately, and every now and then tugging out a ragged
word by the roots that had more hiccups than syllables in it.
This, together with his hanging his coat on the floor on one side
of a chair, and his vest on the floor on the other side, and
piling his pants on the floor just in front of the same chair,
and then comtemplating the general result with superstitious awe,
and finally pronouncing it “too many for him” and going to bed
with his boots on, led us to fear that something he had eaten had
not agreed with him.
But we knew afterward that it was something he had been
drinking. It was the exclusively Mormon refresher, “valley
tan.”
Valley tan (or, at least, one form of valley tan) is a kind of
whisky, or first cousin to it; is of Mormon invention and
manufactured only in Utah. Tradition says it is made of
(imported) fire and brimstone. If I remember rightly no public
drinking saloons were allowed in the kingdom by Brigham Young,
and no private drinking permitted among the faithful, except they
confined themselves to “valley tan.”
Next day we strolled about everywhere through the broad,
straight, level streets, and enjoyed the pleasant strangeness of
a city of fifteen thousand inhabitants with no loafers
perceptible in it; and no visible drunkards or noisy people; a
limpid stream rippling and dancing through every street in place
of a filthy gutter; block after block of trim dwellings, built of
“frame” and sunburned brick—a great thriving orchard and garden
behind every one of them, apparently—branches from the street
stream winding and sparkling among the garden beds and fruit
trees—and a grand general air of neatness, repair, thrift and
comfort, around and about and over the whole. And everywhere were
workshops, factories, and all manner of industries; and intent
faces and busy hands were to be seen wherever one looked; and in
one’s ears was the ceaseless clink of hammers, the buzz of trade
and the contented hum of drums and fly-wheels.
The armorial crest of my own State consisted of two dissolute
bears holding up the head of a dead and gone cask between them
and making the pertinent remark, “UNITED, WE
STAND—(hic!)—DIVIDED, WE FALL.” It was always too figurative
for the author of this book. But the Mormon crest was easy. And
it was simple, unostentatious, and fitted like a glove. It was a
representation of a GOLDEN BEEHIVE, with the bees all at
work!
The city lies in the edge of a level plain as broad as the
State of Connecticut, and crouches close down to the ground under
a curving wall of mighty mountains whose heads are hidden in the
clouds, and whose shoulders bear relics of the snows of winter
all the summer long.
Seen from one of these dizzy heights, twelve or fifteen miles
off, Great Salt Lake City is toned down and diminished till it is
suggestive of a child’s toy-village reposing under the majestic
protection of the Chinese wall.
On some of those mountains, to the southwest, it had been
raining every day for two weeks, but not a drop had fallen in the
city. And on hot days in late spring and early autumn the
citizens could quit fanning and growling and go out and cool off
by looking at the luxury of a glorious snow-storm going on in the
mountains. They could enjoy it at a distance, at those seasons,
every day, though no snow would fall in their streets, or
anywhere near them.
Salt Lake City was healthy—an extremely healthy city. They
declared there was only one physician in the place and he
was arrested every week regularly and held to answer under the
vagrant act for having “no visible means of support.” They always
give you a good substantial article of truth in Salt Lake, and
good measure and good weight, too. [Very often, if you wished to
weigh one of their airiest little commonplace statements you
would want the hay scales.]
We desired to visit the famous inland sea, the American “Dead
Sea,” the great Salt Lake—seventeen miles, horseback, from the
city—for we had dreamed about it, and thought about it, and
talked about it, and yearned to see it, all the first part of our
trip; but now when it was only arm’s length away it had suddenly
lost nearly every bit of its interest. And so we put it off, in a
sort of general way, till next day—and that was the last we ever
thought of it. We dined with some hospitable Gentiles; and
visited the foundation of the prodigious temple; and talked long
with that shrewd Connecticut Yankee, Heber C. Kimball (since
deceased), a saint of high degree and a mighty man of
commerce.
We saw the “Tithing-House,” and the “Lion House,” and I do not
know or remember how many more church and government buildings of
various kinds and curious names. We flitted hither and thither
and enjoyed every hour, and picked up a great deal of useful
information and entertaining nonsense, and went to bed at night
satisfied.
The second day, we made the acquaintance of Mr. Street (since
deceased) and put on white shirts and went and paid a state visit
to the king. He seemed a quiet, kindly, easy-mannered, dignified,
self-possessed old gentleman of fifty-five or sixty, and had a
gentle craft in his eye that probably belonged there. He was very
simply dressed and was just taking off a straw hat as we entered.
He talked about Utah, and the Indians, and Nevada, and general
American matters and questions, with our secretary and certain
government officials who came with us. But he never paid any
attention to me, notwithstanding I made several attempts to “draw
him out” on federal politics and his high handed attitude toward
Congress. I thought some of the things I said were rather fine.
But he merely looked around at me, at distant intervals,
something as I have seen a benignant old cat look around to see
which kitten was meddling with her tail.
By and by I subsided into an indignant silence, and so sat
until the end, hot and flushed, and execrating him in my heart
for an ignorant savage. But he was calm. His conversation with
those gentlemen flowed on as sweetly and peacefully and musically
as any summer brook. When the audience was ended and we were
retiring from the presence, he put his hand on my head, beamed
down on me in an admiring way and said to my brother:
“Ah—your child, I presume? Boy, or girl?”
