Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/173

Rh The skull of a full-grown bighorn hanging over the doorway represented the spoils of a stag of twelve. The table-cloth was clean, so was the cooking, so were the children; and I was reminded of Europe by the way in which she insisted upon washing my shirt, an operation which, after leaving the Missouri, ça va sans dire, had fallen to my own lot. In fact, this day introduced me to the third novel sensation experienced on the western side of the Atlantic. The first is to feel (practically) that all men are equal; that you are no man's superior, and that no man is yours. The second—this is spoken as an African wanderer—to see one's quondam acquaintance, the Kaffir, laying by his grass kilt and coat of grease, invest himself in broadcloth, part his wool on one side, shave what pile nature has scattered upon his upper lip, chin, and cheeks below a line drawn from the ear to the mouth-corner after the fashion of the times when George the Third was king, and call himself, not Sambo, but Mr. Scott. The third was my meeting in the Rocky Mountains with this refreshing specimen of that far Old World, where, on the whole, society still lies in strata, as originally deposited, distinct, sharply defined, and rarely displaced, except by some violent upheaval from below, which, however, never succeeds long in producing total inversion. Miss Moore's husband, a decent appendage, had transferred his belief from the Church of England to the Church of Utah, and the good wife, as in duty bound, had followed in his wake whom she was bound to love, honor, and obey. But when the serpent came and whispered in Miss Moore's modest, respectable, one-idea'd ear that the Abrahams of Great Salt Lake City are mere "sham Abrams"—that, not content with Sarahs, they add to them an unlimited supply of Hagars, then did our stout Englishwoman's power of endurance break down never to rise again. "Not an inch would she budge;" not a step toward Utah Territory would she take. She fought pluckily against the impending misfortune, and—à quelque chose malheur est bon!—she succeeded in reducing her husband to that state which is typified by the wife using certain portions of the opposite sex's wardrobe, and in making him make a good livelihood as station-master on the wagon-line.

After a copious breakfast, which broke the fast of the four days that had dragged on since our civilized refection at Fort Laramie, we spread our buffalos and water-proofs under the ample eaves of the ranch, and spent the day in taking time with the sextant—every watch being wrong—in snoozing, dozing, chatting, smoking, and contemplating the novel view. Straight before us rose the Rattlesnake Hills, a nude and grim horizon, frowning over the soft and placid scene below, while at their feet flowed the little river—splendidior vitro—purling over its pebbly bed with graceful meanderings through clover prairillons and garden-spots full of wild currants, strawberries, gooseberries, and