amount of bread, yet have made up their minds to act while it lasts as if there were no such thing as starvation.  The greatest comfort you can afford a Mormon is to tell him how young Brigham looks; for the quick, unconscious sequence is, “Then Brigham may last out my time.”  Those who think at all have no conjecture of any Mormon future beyond him, and I know that many Mormons (Heber Kimball included) would gladly die to-day rather than survive him and encounter that judgment-day and final perdition of their faith which must dawn on his new-made grave.

Well, we may give them this comfort without any insincerity.  Let us return to where he stands gazing down on the parquet.  Like any Eastern party-goer, he is habited in the “customary suit of solemn black,” and looks very distinguished in this dress, though his daily homespun detracts nothing from the feeling, when in his presence, that you are beholding a most remarkable man.  He is nearly seventy years old, but appears very little over forty.  His height is about five feet ten inches; his figure very well made and slightly inclining to portliness.  His hair is a rich curly chestnut, formerly worn long, in supposed imitation of the apostolic coiffure, but now cut in our practical Eastern fashion, as accords with the man of business, whose metier he has added to apostleship with the growing temporal prosperity of Zion.  Indeed, he is the greatest business-man on the continent,—­the cashier of a firm of eighty thousand silent partners, and the only auditor of that cashier, besides.  If I to-day signified my conversion to Mormonism, to-morrow I should be baptized by Brigham’s hands.  The next day I should be invited to appear at the Church-Office (Brigham’s) and exhibit to the Church (Brigham) a faithful inventory of my entire estate.  I am a cabinet-maker, let us say, and have brought to Salt Lake the entire earnings of my New-York shop,—­twenty thousand dollars.  The Church (Brigham sole and simple) examines and approves my inventory.  It (Brigham alone) has the absolute decision of the question whether any more cabinet-makers are needed in Utah.  If the Church (Brigham) says, “No,” it (Brigham again) has the right to tell me where labor is wanted, and set me going in my new occupation.  If the Church (Brigham) says, “Yes,” it further goes on to inform me, without appeal, exactly what proportion of the twenty thousand dollars on my inventory can be properly turned into the channels of the new cabinet-shop.  I am making no extraordinary or disproportionate supposition when I say that the Church (Brigham) permits me to retain just one-half of my property.  The remaining ten thousand dollars goes into the Church-Fund, (Brigham’s Herring-safe,) and from that portion of my life’s savings I never hear again, in the form either of capital, interest, bequeathable estate, or dower to my widow.  Except for the purposes of the Church, (Brigham’s unquestionable will,) my ten thousand dollars is as though it had