It Is
Delightful To See How Eagerly All These Are Sought After By The
Children, Both Boys And Girls.
Every day that I have gone botanizing
I have met groups of little Latter-Days with their precious bouquets,
and at such times it was hard to believe the dark, bloody passages of
Mormon history.
But to return to the city. As soon as City Creek approaches its upper
limit its waters are drawn off right and left, and distributed in
brisk rills, one on each side of every street, the regular slopes of
the delta upon which the city is built being admirable adapted to this
system of street irrigation. These streams are all pure and sparkling
in the upper streets, but, as they are used to some extent as sewers,
they soon manifest the consequence of contact with civilization,
though the speed of their flow prevents their becoming offensive, and
little Saints not over particular may be seen drinking from them
everywhere.
The streets are remarkably wide and the buildings low, making them
appear yet wider than they really are. Trees are planted along the
sidewalks - elms, poplars, maples, and a few catalpas and hawthorns;
yet they are mostly small and irregular, and nowhere form avenues half
so leafy and imposing as one would be led to expect. Even in the
business streets there is but little regularity in the buildings - now
a row of plain adobe structures, half store, half dwelling, then a
high mercantile block of red brick or sandstone, and again a row of
adobe cottages nestled back among apple trees. There is one immense
store with its sign upon the roof, in letters big enough to be read
miles away, "Z.C.M.I." (Zion's Co-operative Mercantile Institution),
while many a small, codfishy corner grocery bears the legend "Holiness
to the Lord, Z.C.M.I." But little evidence will you find in this
Zion, with its fifteen thousand souls, of great wealth, though many a
Saint is seeking it as keenly as any Yankee Gentile. But on the other
had, searching throughout all the city, you will not find any trace of
squalor or extreme poverty.
Most of the women I have chanced to meet, especially those from the
country, have a weary, repressed look, as if for the sake of their
religion they were patiently carrying burdens heavier than they were
well able to bear. But, strange as it must seem to Gentiles, the many
wives of one man, instead of being repelled from one another by
jealousy, appear to be drawn all the closer together, as if the real
marriage existed between the wives only. Groups of half a dozen or so
may frequently be seen on the streets in close conversation, looking
as innocent and unspeculative as a lot of heifers, while the masculine
Saints pass them by as if they belonged to a distinct species. In the
Tabernacle last Sunday, one of the elders of the church, in
discoursing upon the good things of life, the possessions of Latter-Day Saints, enumerated fruitful fields, horses, cows, wives, and
implements, the wives being placed as above, between the cows and
implements, without receiving any superior emphasis.
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