Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/225

Rh Even where this is not the case, the reader of travels will not dislike to peruse something more of a theme with which he is estimation of a sex—which is early taught and soon learns to consider itself creation's cream—conveyed in these words of Mr. Brigham Young: "If I did not consider myself competent to transact business without asking my wife, or any other woman's counsel, I think I ought to let that business alone."

Accordingly, Mrs. Ferris finds herself in the hands and of a "society of fanatics," controlled by a "gang of licentious villains"—an unpleasant predicament pour cette vertu—in fact, for virtue at any time of life—characterizes the land as a "Botany Bay" for society in general, and a "region of moral pestilence;" and while she lavishes the treasures of her pity upon the "poor, poor wife," holds her spiritual rival to be tout bonnement a "concubine," and consigns the wretches assembled here (scil. in Zion on the tops of the Mountains) to the "very hottest part of the infernal torrid zone." Tantæne animis cœlestibus iræ?

The Mormons declare that they incurred this funny amount of feminine wrath and suffered from its consequent pin-pricks by their not taking sufficient interest in, or notice of the writer, especially by the fact that on one occasion—it is made much of in the book—some rude men actually did walk over a bridge before her. But coming direct from the land of woman's rights' associations, lecturesses on propagandism and voluntary celibatarians, whose "mission" it is to reform, purify, and exalt the age, especially our wicked selves, what else could be expected of outraged delicacy and self-esteem? Not being "vivisectors," we can not, however, quite join with Mrs. Ferris in the complacency with which she relates her "probing the hearts" of her Mormon guests and visitors "with ruthless questions" about their domestic affairs; and we remark with pleasure that in more than one place she has most unwillingly confessed the kindness and civility of the Latter-Day Saints.

29. Adventures among the Mormons, by Elder Hawthornthwaite, an Apostate Missionary. (1857.)

30. The Mormons, the Dream and the Reality; or, Leaves from the Sketchbook of Experience. Edited by a Clergyman. W.B.F. (8vo, London, 1857).

31. The Husband in Utah; or, Sights and Scenes among the Mormons. By Austin N. Ward. Edited by Mrs. Maria Ward, Author of "Female Life among the Mormons" (212 pages, 8vo, Derby and Jackson, Nassau Street, New York, 1857). It is regretable that a respectable publisher should lend his name to a volume like this. The authoress professes to edit the MS. left by a nephew of her husband, who lived among the Mormons en route to California, went on to the gold regions and died. I can not but characterize it as a pure invention. The writer who describes markets where not one ever existed, and "the tall spires of the Mormon temples glittering in the rich sunlight" (p. 15), there being no spires and no temples at Utah, can hardly expect to be believed, even when, with all the eloquence of Mr. Potts, of the "Katanswill Gazette," she dwells upon the "fanaticism and diabolism that ever attends (?) the hideous and slimy course of Mormonism in its progress over the world." The imposture, too, is not "white;" it is premeditatedly mischievous. Although Brother Underwood is a fancy personage, Miss Eliza R. Snow, with whose name improper liberties are taken, is no myth, but a well educated and highly respectable reality.

32. Fifteen Years among the Mormons, being the Narrative of Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith, late of the Great Salt Lake City, a Sister of one of the Mormon High-Priests, she having been personally acquainted with most of the Mormon leaders, and long in the confidence of the Prophet Brigham Young. By Nelson Winch Green. (Charles Scribner, Broadway, New York, 1858, and unhappily republished by Messrs. Routledge, London.) This work, whose exceedingly clap-trap title is a key to the "popular" nature of the contents, is, par excellence, the most offensive publication of the kind, and bears within it marks of an exceeding untruthfulness. The human sacrifices and the abominable rites performed in the Endowment House are reproductions of the accounts of hidden orgies in the Nauvoo Temple, invented and promulgated by Mr. Bowes. The last words placed in the mouth of Mr. Joseph Smith, "My God! my God! have mercy upon us, if there is a God!"—a palpable plagiarism from Lord P's will—may be a pious fraud to warn stray lambs from the fold of Mormonism, but as a history shows, it is wholly destitute of fact. The murder in Mr. Jones', the butcher's house, so circumstantially related, never took