the land. But to-day, so far from killing openly or secretly, or
burning Gentile farms, it is all the Mormon dare do to feebly try
to boycott the interloper. His journals preach defiance to the
United States Government, and in the Tabernacle on a Sunday the
preachers follow suit.

When I went there, the place was full of people who would have
been much better for a washing.

A man rose up and told them that they were the chosen of God, the
elect of Israel; that they were to obey their priests, and that
there was a good time coming. I fancy that they had heard all
this before so many times it produced no impression whatever,
even as the sublimest mysteries of another faith lose salt
through constant iteration. They breathed heavily through their
noses, and stared straight in front of them--impassive as flat
fish.



VII

America's Defenceless Coasts

JUST suppose that America were twenty days distant from England.
Then a man could study its customs with undivided soul; but being
so very near next door, he goes about the land with one eye on
the smoke of the flesh-pots of the old country across the seas,
while with the other he squints biliously and prejudicially at
the alien.