“I love the Danes dearly!  I’ve got a Danish wife.”  Then turning to a rough-looking carpenter, hammering near him,—­“You know Christiny,—­eh, Brother Spudge?”

“Oh, yes! know her very well!”

A moment after,—­“The Irish are a dear people.  My Irish wife is among the best I’ve got.”

Again,—­“I love the Germans!  Got a Dutch wife, too!  Know Katrine, Brother Spudge?  Remember she couldn’t scarcely talk a word o’ English when she come,—­eh, Brother Spudge?”

Brother Spudge remembered,—­and Brother Heber continued to trot out the members of his marital stud for discussion of their points with his more humble fellow-polygamist of the hammer; but when I happened to touch upon the earliest Mrs. Heber, whom I naturally thought he would by this time regard as a forgotten fossil in the Lower Silurian strata of his connubial life, and referred to the interview I had enjoyed with her on the afternoon before entering the city, his whole manner changed to a proper husbandly dignity, and, without seeking corroboration from the carpenter, be replied, gravely,—­

“Yes! that is my first wife, and the best woman God ever made!”

The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying Mormon sociology as three months’ ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not have given me.  Though Mormondom is disloyal to the core, it still patronizes the Fourth of July, at least in its phase of festivity, omitting the patriotism, but keeping the fireworks of our Eastern celebration, substituting “Utah” for “Union” in the Buncombe speeches, and having a ball instead of the Declaration of Independence.  All the saints within half a day’s ride of the city come flocking into it to spend the Fourth.  A well-to-do Mormon at the head of his wives and children, all of whom are probably eating candy as they march through the metropolitan streets in solid column, looks to the uninitiated like the principal of a female seminary, weak in its deportment, taking out his charge for an airing.

Last Fourth of July, it may be remembered, fell on a Saturday.  In their ambition to reproduce ancient Judaism (and this ambition is the key to their whole puzzle) the Mormons are Sabbatarians of a strictness which would delight Lord Shaftesbury.  Accordingly, in order that their festivities might not encroach on the early hours of the Sabbath, they had the ball on Fourth-of-July eve, instead of the night of the Fourth.  I could not realize the risk of such an encroachment when I read the following sentence printed on my billet of invitation:—­

“Dancing to commence at 4 P.M.”