American Notes by Rudyard Kipling
page 85 of 101 (84%)
page 85 of 101 (84%)
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from the desert, come in to trade with the Zion Mercantile
Co-operative Institute. The Church, I fancy, looks after the finances of this thing, and it consequently pays good dividends. The faces of the women were not lovely. In-deed, but for the certainty that ugly persons are just as irrational in the matter of undivided love as the beautiful, it seems that polygamy was a blessed institution for the women, and that only the dread threats of the spiritual power could drive the hulking, board-faced men into it. The women wore hideous garments, and the men appeared to be tied up with strings. They would market all that afternoon, and on Sunday go to the praying-place. I tried to talk to a few of them, but they spoke strange tongues, and stared and behaved like cows. Yet one woman, and not an altogether ugly one, confided to me that she hated the idea of Salt Lake City being turned into a show-place for the amusement of the Gentiles. "If we 'have our own institutions, that ain't no reason why people should come 'ere and stare at us, his it?" The dropped "h" betrayed her. "And when did you leave England?" I said. "Summer of '84. I am Dorset," she said. "The Mormon agent was very good to us, and we was very poor. Now we're better off--my father, an' mother, an' me." |
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