independent citizen to dub himself a Gentile, but the Mayor of
Ogden--which is the Gentile city of the valley--told me that
there must be some distinction between the two flocks.

Long before the fruit orchards of Logan or the shining levels of
the Salt Lake had been reached, that mayor--himself a Gentile,
and one renowned for his dealings with the Mormons--told me that
the great question of the existence of the power within the power
was being gradually solved by the ballot and by education.

All the beauty of the valley could not make me forget it. And
the valley is very fair. Bench after bench of land, flat as a
table against the flanks of the ringing hills, marks where the
Salt Lake rested for awhile in its collapse from an inland sea to
a lake fifty miles long and thirty broad.

There are the makings of a very fine creed about Mormonism. To
begin with, the Church is rather more absolute than that of Rome.
Drop the polygamy plank in the platform, but on the other hand
deal lightly with certain forms of excess; keep the quality of
the recruit down to the low mental level, and see that the best
of all the agricultural science available is in the hands of the
elders, and there you have a first-class engine for pioneer work.
The tawdry mysticism and the borrowing from Freemasonry serve the
low caste Swede and Dane, the Welshman and the Cornish cotter,
just as well as a highly organized heaven.

Then I went about the streets and peeped into people's front
windows, and the decorations upon the tables were after the
manner of the year 1850. Main Street was full of country folk