Wise intelligences in the world of spirits have originated and guided the Mormon movement, and these intelligences will develop new communities under similar auspices.  The legislators of the land, the Napoleons of the day, would do well to investigate the policy of the leaders of Utah.

The crimes common in your large cities are not known among the Mormons.  They live on friendly terms with the red men of the plains, and are just in their dealings.

Each citizen is taught that the public welfare is his own welfare.  In your own large towns the citizens shirk public duties; but in Utah there is a oneness of feeling, which it would be well for those who consider themselves superior in the scale of civilization to imitate.

W. E. BURTON.

DRAMA IN SPIRIT LIFE.

“Honor pricks me on.  Yea; but how if honor pricks me off when I come on?  How then?  Can honor set-to a leg?  No.  Or an arm?  No.  Or take away the grief of a wound?  No.  Honor hath no skill in surgery, then?  No.  What is honor?  A word.  What is that word, honor?  Air.  A trim reckoning!  Who hath it?  He that died o’ Wednesday.  Doth he feel it?  No.  Doth he hear it?  No.  Is it insensible, then?  Yea, to the dead.  But will it not live with the living?  No.  Why?  Detraction will not suffer it.”

What is honor?  A mere word.  What is Heaven?  A word—­a phantasy.  A vaporish place, too delicate and subtle for such fun-loving, corpulent specimens of the Creator’s wisdom as old Jack Falstaff.

O rare Jack Falstaff!  He was a child of nature, and to my thinking, his homely phrases displayed more intuitive knowledge of the laws of nature than the finest transcendental imaginings ever discovered.

We shock the feelings of a thousand playwrights and play-goers by asserting that in this impalpable land of souls we are guilty of encouraging the playhouse!  But so it is; we cannot live on “honors;” the fame and glory which has been awarded to us by our fellow-men on earth is like chaff to us.

It was with hardly an emotion of surprise that I beheld theatres in the spirit land, though I have seen many who, having been fed on the false system of religion, and pampered on glittering imaginings, start back with alarm on beholding the magnificent buildings we have erected to the drama, thinking, that by some strange turning, they had entered through the wrong gate.

The drama with us is a source of both enjoyment and instruction.  The history of past ages in the spirit world is enacted with thrilling interest, and each new spirit from earth has an opportunity thus to become acquainted with the transactions of the past in the land of spirits.

The gay and brilliant theatre of which I have been induced to take the management, is original in its structure, and of a light and beautiful style of architecture.  The balconies are suspended and movable.  Outside the building, and overlooking a placid sheet of water, are galleries connected with and corresponding to those within, where persons who desire may pass out during intermission, and regale themselves with the fresh fruit and the fine prospect.