Part 20

“But,” says I, in a slower, more thoughtful way, “there is different kinds of tribulations. And you can look at subjects with the sentimental eye of your specks, and then agin you can turn the other eye onto ’em. And in lookin’ through that other eye at ’em, you might possibly see that the married life of these plural wives is wretched—full of jealousies, divisions, and sizms.

“Woman’s love, when it has room to grow, is a tremendous thing to spread itself. But (still lookin’ through that common sense eye of our specks) we would say that the divine plant of love _can’t_ grow so thrifty in one-twentieth part of a man’s heart as it could in a more expanded and roomy place. We would say (still lookin’ through that eye) that it was too cramped a spot—some like growin’ a oak in a bottle. You can make it sprout; but there can’t be so deep roots nor so strong a strength to it, and it wouldn’t take nigh so much of a pull to wrench it up by the roots.

“And so, to foller up the simely, as simelys ort to be follered, we would think that the first wife is the one who would suffer most; she who thought she was marryin’ a hull man, who dwelt for awhile in a hull heart, and whose affections, therefore, had naturally took deep root, and spread themselves. We would say (still lookin’ through that eye of the speck, and still follerin’ up simelys) that she is the one who would be most wrung with agony.”

“Wall,” says Elder Judas Wart, seemin’ly ketchin’ holt of the first argument that presented itself in front of his mind, for truly he didn’t seem to care how crooked his argument was, nor how wobblin’. Says he:

“Sufferin’ is a divine agent to draw souls heavenward.”

“Yes, heaven-sent sufferin’,” says I, “will draw our hearts up nearer to the heavenly home it come from. But when sufferin’ comes up from below, from another place, scented with brimstone, and loaded with iniquity, it will do its best to draw us down to it where it come from.”

“Pain sometimes teaches divine lessons,” says Elder Judas Wart. And I never see a mouth puckered and twisted down into a more hypocritical pucker than hisen was.

Says I: “Don’t you s’pose I know that?” And then I went on awful eloquent, and grew eloquenter and eloquenter all the time for as much as five minutes or more, entirely unbeknown to me, not thinkin’ who was there, or who I was a talkin’ to, or where, or when:

“Don’t I know,” says I, “that no soul has reached its full might, no soul has ever really lived, till it has learned to bless God for the divine ministry of sorrow? Don’t I certainly know that of all God’s angels the one who brings us divinest gifts is the blessed angel of Pain?”

And I went on again, in that fearfully eloquent way of mine, when I get entirely rousted up in eloquence, and know not where I am, or who is hearin’ of me, or why, or which:

“If we bar this angel from our door, resist her gentle voice pleadin’ at our heart, woe be to us; for she can come as a avenger, a destroyer. But if we greet her as indeed a heavenly visitant, believe that God sent her, hold her in our weak arms close to our hearts, she gives us divinest strength.

“Though we turn away, and fear her greeting, we find that the touch of her lips on our burning brow leaves calm. She lays on our throbbing, aching hearts soft hands of peace. Her eyes have a sorry look for us, that make our tears flow, and then we see that those sad, sweet eyes are looking up from earth to where our own, tear-blinded, are fain to follow—up beyond the vail, into that beautiful city where our treasures and our hopes are.

To no other angel has God given the power to so reveal to us the glory and the mystery of life and of death. No other hand but hers has such power to unlock the very doors of heaven and send down into our hearts heaven’s peace and glory. Don’t I know this? don’t I know that in the hour of our bitterest sorrow, our deepest affliction, when the one that made our world lies silent before us, deaf for the first time to our tears and our sorrow; when all the world looks black and desolate, and hatred and envy and malice seem to surround us, and our human strength is gone, and human help is vain; don’t I know that this divine angel of Pain opens the very doors of Heaven, and lets down a perfect flood of glory into our soul—not happiness, but blessedness.

“Yes, the crosses this angel brings us from a lovin’ Father we will bear in God’s name. But,” says I, firmly, “other folks must do as they are a mind to; but I never will, not if I know it, bend my back, and let old Belzebub lay one of his crosses acrost my shoulder-blades. No, I will throw off that cross, and stamp onto it. And this cross of Mormonism is one of hisen, if he ever had one. It is made out of Belzebub’s own timber, nailed together by man’s selfishness and brutality and cruelty, the very worst part of his nature. It is one of the very heaviest crosses ever tackled by wimmen, and bore along by ’em, wet with their blood and sweat and tears. And Samantha will do her best to stamp onto ’em, every one of ’em, and break ’em up into kindlin’-wood, and build fires with ’em to burn up this putryfyin’ crime of polygimy, root and branch; make a cleansin’ blaze of it to try to purify God’s sweet air it has defiled.”

“Oh!” says Elder Judas Wart, with a low deep groan, “oh! how unpractical females always are. Females are carried away by their sympathies and religious feelings and sense of right and duty, making them a most dangerous element in politics, a very striking and unwholesome contrast to the present admirable system of government, if they were ever incorporated into the body politic; in short, if they ever vote. Let us look on the subject in a practical light.”

And I was so beat out by my eloquent emotions (such emotions are beautiful to have by you, but fatiguin’ to handle, as I handle ’em, and I can’t deny it); and bein’ also almost completely out of wind, I sot still, and let him go on.

And he talked, I should judge, well on to a quarter of a hour about Communism, Socialism, its principles, its rise, and progress; and I let him go on, and didn’t hardly say a word, only I would merely throw in little observations occasionally, such as, when he argued that everybody should own the same amount of property, and there should be no rich and no poor.

I merely threw in this question to him: Whether he thought shiftlessness and laziness should have the same reward as industry and frugality?

And when he was a goin’ on about everybody bein’ educated the same so one could not be intellectually superior to the other, I simply asked him whether he thought Nature was a Socialist.

Says he: “Why?”

“Oh!” says I, “I was a thinkin’ if she was one, she didn’t live up to her belief. She didn’t equalize brains and thrift and economy.”

“Wall, as I was a sayin’” says he, “as it were, you know”—

“No,” says I, coldly, “I don’t know it, nor I never did. I know,” says I, lookin’ keen at him, “that some are born almost fools, and keep on so; and some,” says I, with a sort of modest, becomin’ look, “some are very smart.”

He kep’ perfectly still for a minute, or mebby a minute and a ½. he seemed to collect his strength agin, and broke out, in a loud, haughty tone:

“The fault of our old civilization is that property is controlled by the few. How can a man have the same love for his home, for his hearth-stone, if he works the land of some great landed proprietor? In case of war, now, foreign invasion, if each man owned property of his own, if each man was a Mormon, in fact, he would be fighting for his own interest; not for the interest of some great landed lord. He would be fightin’ for his own hearth-stone; the sacred and holy hearth-stone.”

Says I, in reasonable axents: “I hain’t a word to aginst the sacredness of the hearth-stun. I hain’t a word to say aginst the stun. But wouldn’t it be apt to take off a little of the sacredness of the stun to have thirty or forty wimmen a settin’ on it; each claimin’ it as her own stun? Wouldn’t it have to be a pretty large stun, and a pretty firm one, to stand the gusts and whirlwinds of temper that would be raised round it? And to tell the plain truth, Elder Judas Wart, don’t you believe that every man that owned such a stun, and 30 or 40 wimmen a settin’ on it, and childern accordin’ly, don’t you believe that such a man instead of discouragin’ war would do all in his power to welcome and encourage it, so he could go forth into the battle-field, and find a little peace and repose; that is, if he was a gentle, amiable man, who loved quiet?”

He never said one word in answer to this deep argument, he see it was too deep and sound for him to grapple with; but he kep’ right on, and says, thinkin’ mebby it would skair me, says he:

“Our order was founded by Thalos of Chalcedon.”

“Wall,” says I, “Mr. Thalos is a man that I hain’t no acquaintance with,—I, nor Josiah; so I can’t form any opinion what sort of a character he has got, or what for a man he would be to neighbor with.”

Says he, in a still prouder and haughtier way: “Plato believed in it.”

“How do you know?” says I. “He never told me that he did. If he had, I should have argued sound with him.” And says I, lookin’ keen and searchin’ at him:

“Did he tell you that he believed in it?” says I. “You can hear most anything.”

“Why, no,” says he, “he didn’t tell me. He died twenty-two hundred years ago.”

“Wall,” says I, coolly, “I thought you got it by hearsay. I didn’t believe you got it from the old gentleman himself, or from any of his relations. I remember Mr. Plato myself, now. I have heard Thomas J. read about him frequent. A sort of a schoolmaster, I believe—a man that travelled a good deal—and had considerable of a noble mean. If I remember right, I have seen him myself on a bust. But as I was a sayin’, s’posen Mr. Plato did believe in it. Don’t you s’pose that old gentleman had his faults? He was a nice old man, and very smart. His writings are truly beautiful and inspirin’.

“Why some of his dialogues are almost as keen and sensible and flowery as them that have taken place between a certain woman that I won’t mention the name of, and her pardner Josiah. Why, jest the fact that he got sold once for talkin’ so plain in the cause of Right, endeared him to me. And the fact that he didn’t fetch only twenty minnys (and we all know what small fish they be) didn’t make him seem any the less valuable to me. No, not at all so; it wouldn’t, if he hadn’t fetched more than one little chub.

“Them views of his’en, them witherin’ idees aginst tyrany that he was preachin’ to a tyrent, whales couldn’t lug, nor sharks. They was too big and hefty to be bought or sold. But because Mr. Plato was all right in some things, we mustn’t think he was in all. We are apt to think so, and we are apt to think that that because a gulf of a thousand or two years lay between us and a certain person, that it seperates them from all our mortal errors and simplicities.

“But it hain’t so. That old man had other human weaknesses besides writin’ poetry. I persume Miss Plato had to deal real severe with him lots of times, jest as I do with Josiah. I dare persume to say she had hard work to get along with him more’n half the time. And if he believed in Mormonism, he believed in sunthin’ wicked and abominable, and if I had been on intimate terms with him and her, I should have talked to him like a sister, right before her, so she would feel all right about it, and not get oneasy and jealous. I should have talked powerful to him, and if he is the man I take him to be, I could have convinced him in ten minutes, I know I could.”

“Wall,” says he, “bringin’ the history of our church down to Christ’s day: He was a believer in it.”

I riz right up in a awful dignity and power, and I says, in a tone that was fearful to hear, it was so burnin’ indignant:

“You say that agin in my house, if you dare.”

He dassent, my tone was such. He never said a word, but sot kinder scroochin’ and meachin’ on his chair, and I went on, resumin’ my seat agin, knowin’ as I did that my principles was so hefty I had better save myself all the extra weariness that I could. Says I:

“You dare to say that He, the Deliverer of His people from sin and evil—He, the Teacher of all purity, morality, honesty, and all Christian virtues, who came bringin’ peace on earth, good will to men—He, who taught that a man should have one wife, and be tender and constant to her, even as He loved the Church and gave Himself for it—He, whose life was so pure and self-denyin’ and holy that it brought the divine down to the comprehension of the human—the love and purity of God manifest in the flesh—how dare you tell me that He was a Mormon?”

He dassent say it agin. He dast as well die as to say it. I s’pose, in fact I know, from my feelin’s which I was a feelin’, that my mean was awfuler and more majesticker than it had been for years and years.

Says he, “As it were—” and then he stopped short off, seemin’ly to collect his thoughts together, and then he kinder coughed, and begun agin— “And so forth, and so on,” says he. He acted fairly afraid. And I don’t wonder at it a mite. My looks must have been awful, and witherin’ in the extreme.

But finally he says, “We read of this sect in the Bible, anyway. The Essenes was Mormons, or sort o’ Mormony,” says he, glancin’ at me and then at the teakettle, in a sort of a fearful way.

But says I, coldly, “We read in the Bible of droves of swine that was full of evil spirits; and we read in it of lunaticks, and barren fig-trees, and Judas, and the—the David—callin’ him David, as a Methodist and member of the meetin’-house, who does not want to say Satan if she can possibly help it.

“Now,” says I, “you have brought up every commandment of God, and I have preached on ’em, and you find every one of ’em is aginst you—the old law, and the divine new law made manifest in Christ. Now,” says I, coolly, leanin’ back in my chair, full of martyrdom and eloquence and victory and everything, “bring on your next argument, bring it right here, and let me lay holt of it, and vanquish it, and overthrow it”

“Wall,” says he, “I hold that the perfect faith that thousands have in our religion and its founder, is one of the very strongest proofs of its divine origin.”

“I don’t think so,” says I. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, but things don’t always turn out to be what you hoped they was. Now, there is hash, for instance: and in order to enjoy hash, you have got to have perfect confidence in it and its maker. But still you may have that perfect confidence in it, and eat it in faith, believin’ it is good beef and pork, while at the same time there may be ingredients in it that you know not of, such as Skotch snuff, lily white, hairpins, and etcetery. Hash is a great mystery, and often deceivin’ to the partaker, no matter how strong his faith in it may be.

“And I might foller up this strikin’ simely of hash into other eloquent metafors, such as pills, preachin’, wimmen’s complexion, and etcetery. Some is good and true, and some hain’t good and true, but they all find somebody to believe in ’em.

“This is a very deep subject, and solemn, if handled solemnly. I have handled it only in a light parable way, showin’ that them that do honestly believe in this Mormon doctrine, if there are any, are partakin’ (unbeknown to them) of a hash that is full of abomination and uncleanness, full of humiliation, sorrow, and degradation. Oh!” says I, fallin’ back on the side of the subject nearest to my heart, “when I think of the woes of my sect there in Utah, I feel feelin’s that never can be told or sung. No, there never could be a tune made mournful and solemn enough to sing ’em in.”

Says he, bold as brass, and not thinkin’ how he was a wobblin’ round in his argument, “They enjoy it.”

Says I, firm as Bunker Hill, and as lofty, “They don’t enjoy it.”

Says he, “They do.”

Says I, “Elder Judas Wart, you tell me that agin, and I’ll know the reason why.”

“Why,” says he, “they have petitioned Congress to not meddle with the laws.”

Says I, “Can you tell me, Elder Judas Wart, can you tell me honestly that there wasn’t man’s influence lookin’ right out of that petition?”

“No, mum, there wuzn’t. They done it of their own wills and acords.”

Says I, firmly, “I don’t believe it. And if I did, it would only show to me the blightin’, corruptin’, influence of your belief.”

“Why,” says he, “some of our wimmen are the most active in our church—full of religious zeal.”

Says I, coolly, “All kinds of zeal hain’t religious zeal.” Says I, “The kind that makes a mother throw her child into the Ganges, and burn herself with the dead body of her husband—you can call it religious zeal, if you want to, but I call it fanatical frenzy.”

Says he, “They are perfectly happy in their belief.”

Says I, “You needn’t never say that agin to me, thinkin’ I will believe it, for before Mormonism was ever made, human nature was made, wimmen’s hearts was made. And when you show me a man who would enjoy havin’ his right hand cut off, or his eyes plucked out of his head, then I will show you a woman, a womanly woman, who enjoys sharin’ the love of the man she worships—enjoys seein’ it passin’ away from her, given to another. Why, it is aginst nater, as much as it is for the sun to shine at midnight. Blackness and despair and gloom is what rains when the sun of love is gone down—it’s nater, and can’t be helped, no more than the sun can, or the moon, or anything. No woman ever enjoyed this wretched doctrine—that is, no good woman, no pure, tender-hearted, affectionate woman.”

“Why,” says he, “I s’posed you thought all wimmen was perfect.”

“No, I don’t, sir, no sir. A woman can lose all that is sweet and lovely in her nature—all the traits that make her so attractive, her tenderness, her affection, her constancy, her modesty, her purity. She can get very low down in the scale of being, lower, I think, than a man can get. You know the further up any one is, the worse it hurts ’em to fall.

“Now the angels that fell down from heaven, I s’pose it changed ’em, and disfigured ’em, and spilte ’em as bad agin as it would to fall down suller. Josiah fell a week ago last Wednesday night, with a hammer in one hand, and a box of nails in the other. He was fixin’ up a cupboard for me in the sullerway. He fell flat down and lay his hull length on the suller bottom. Skairt me awfully. Skairt him, too, and sort o’ madded him, as it always will a man when they fall. I was gettin’ the supper onto the table, and I started on the run for the suller door, and says I, in agitated axents, and weak as a cat with my emotions:

“Did it hurt you, Josiah?”

Says he, sort o’ surly, “It didn’t do me any good.”

But he got up, and was all right the next day. I have used this poetical simely, of its hurtin’ anybody worse to fall down from such a lofty height than to fall down the sullerway, to show my meanin’ that a pure woman’s nature is naturally very pure and lofty, and if she loses it she falls very low indeed.

“Lose it she can—all that makes her sweet and lovely and lovable; but while she keeps her woman’s heart and nature, her life, in your religion, must be a constant martyrdom, and must be in its nature demoralizin’ and debasin’, dealin’ the morals fearful and totterin’ blows.

“Why, don’t you s’pose I can take it to myself? Now, Home is the most heavenly word we know. We hain’t learnt the heavenly alphabet yet, none of us, and so can’t spell out the word Heaven as it ort to be spelt. We are children that hain’t learnt God’s language yet. But Home in its true meanin’ is sunthin’ as near heaven as we can translate and spell out below. Home, when it is built as any home must be in order to stand, on a true love, and in the fear of God, such a home is almost a heaven below. I know it, for a certain home was built on these very foundations upwards of 20 years ago, and not a j’int has moved, not a sleeper decayed. Such a home means delight, rest, comfort. I know it, and my Josiah knows it.

“But let Josiah Allen bring home one more wife, let alone a dozen or fifteen of ’em—let him bring home one small wife besides Samantha, and I should find that home meant sunthin’ very different from peace and rest and happiness. And Josiah Allen would find out that it did, too. He would, if I know my own heart, and am not deceived in myself. And when I think of it, think of what my own sect are a sufferin’ right here in our own land, it makes my blood bile up in my vains, and the tears jest start to every eye in my head, and if I had two dozen eyes I could cry and weep with every one of ’em, a thinkin’ how I should feel under them circumstances—a thinkin’ of the desecration of all that is holiest, and purest, and most blessed. Thinkin’ of the agony of remembrance, and regret, and despair that would sweep over me—remembrance of the old, happy days when I was blest with the love that had gone from me—regret for all the happy days, happy words of love and tenderness, happy hours of confidence and affection—mine once, gone forever. Despair, utter, black despair that all was past.

“And besides this sufferin’, think of the ravages it would make in my morals, as well as his’en. I know jest how much my morals can stand, I know to a inch jest how much strain I can put onto ’em. And I know, jest as well as I know my name was once Smith, that another wife would make ’em totter. And, to be perfectly plain and truthful, I know that wife would make ’em fall perfectly flat down, and break ’em all into pieces, and ruin ’em. I shouldn’t have a single moral left sound and hull, and I know it. I should be ugly.”

Says I, with a added eloquence and bitterness of tone, as my mind roved back onto a certain widder:

“To have another woman come a snoopin’ into my house and my pardner’s heart—why, language hain’t made mean enough to tell what my meanness would be under the circumstances. And her morals, too—why, don’t you s’pose her morals would be flat as a pancake? Yea, verily. And where would my Josiah’s morals be? He wouldn’t have none, not a moral, nor a vestige of any. And there would be three likely persons spilte, entirely, and eternally spilte. And do you s’pose we three persons are so different from any other three persons? No, human nature (man human nature, and woman human nature) is considerable the same all over the world.”

And agin as that fearful scene presented itself to my imagination, of another woman enterin’ into my Josiah’s heart, I sithed powerful, and went on with renewed eloquence. I was fearfully eloquent, and smart as I could be; deep.

Says I, “One man’s heart hain’t of much account, viewed in a permiscus way, but to the woman that loves him it’s a good deal, it is all. Wimmen are foolish about some things, and this is one of ’em. Her love is to her the very breath she breathes—it is the best part of her. Men don’t feel this way as a general thing (my Josiah duz, but he is a shinin’ exception). But as a general thing love is to them a sort of a side-show, a tolerable good entertainment, but it hain’t the hull circus.

“No, a man’s heart hain’t none too large for one woman to dwell in, especially if she is hefty, not at all too large, quite the reverse. And I can tell you, Elder Judas Wart, and tell it firm and solemn, that when it comes to dividin’ up that heart that was a tight fit in the first place, and lettin’ one woman after another come a troopin’ in, a pushin’ the lawful owner out of the way, jammin’ her round, bruisin’ of her, and in the end crowdin’ her completely out in the cold, I say, may God pity such a woman, for human pity can’t be made pitiful enough to reach her.”

Says Elder Judas Wart, “Men that hain’t Mormons sometimes has more than one woman inside of their hearts.”