Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the neighborhood of three thousand saints.  Under these circumstances I felt like the three-thousandth homoeopathic dilution of monogamy.  Morality in this world is so mainly a matter of convention that I dreaded to appear in decent polygamic society, lest respectable women, owning their orthodox tenth of a husband, should shrink from the pollution of my presence, whispering, with a shudder, “Ugh!  Well, I never!  How that one-wifed reprobate can dare to show his face!” But they were very polite, and received me with as skilfully veiled disapprobation as is shown by fashionable Eastern belies to brilliant seducers immoral in our sense.  Had I been a woman, I suppose there would have been no mercy for me.

I sought out our entertainer, Brigham Young, to thank him for the flattering exception made in our Gentile favor.  He was standing in the dress-circle of the theatre, looking down on the dancers with an air of mingled hearty kindness and feudal ownership.  I could excuse the latter, for Utah belongs to him of right.  He may justly say of it, “Is not this great Babylon which I have built?” His sole executive tact and personal fascination are the key-stone of the entire arch of Mormon society.  While he remains, eighty thousand (and increasing) of the most heterogeneous souls that could be swept together from the by-ways of Christendom will continue builded up into a coherent nationality.  The instant he crumbles, Mormondom and Mormonism will fall to pieces at once, irreparably.  His individual magnetism, his executive tact, his native benevolence, are all immense; I regard him as Louis Napoleon, plus a heart; but these advantages would avail him little with the dead-in-earnest fanatics who rule Utah under him, and the entirely persuaded fanatics whom they rule, were not his qualities all coordinated in this one,—­absolute sincerity of belief and motive.  Brigham Young is the farthest remove on earth from a hypocrite; he is that grand, yet awful sight in human nature, a man who has brought the loftiest Christian self-devotion to the altar of the Devil,—­who is ready to suffer crucifixion for Barabbas, supposing him Christ.  Be sure, that, were he a hypocrite, the Union would have nothing to fear from Utah.  When he dies, at least four hostile factions, which find their only common ground in deification of his person, will snatch his mantle at opposite corners.  Then will come such a rending as the world has not seen since the Macedonian generals fought over the coffin of Alexander,—­and then Mormonism will go out of Geography into the History of Popular Delusions.  There is not a single chief, apostle, or bishop, except Brigham, who possesses any catholicity of influence.  I found this tacitly acknowledged in every quarter.  The people seem like citizens of a beleaguered town, who know they have but a definite