not been.  I am a sincere believer, however, and go home light-hearted, with a certified check written by the Recording Angel on my conscience for that amount, passed to my credit in the bank where thieves break not through nor steal,—­it being no more accessible to them than to the depositor, which is a comfort to the latter.  The first year I net from my chairs and tables two thousand dollars.  The Church (Brigham) sends me another invitation to visit it, make a solemn averment of the sum, and pay over to that ecclesiastical edifice, the Herring-safe, two hundred dollars.  Or suppose I have not sold any of my wares as yet, but have only imported, to be sold by-and-by, five hundred Boston rockers.  On learning this fact, the Church (Brigham) graciously accepts fifty for its own purposes.—­Being founded upon a rock, it does not care, in its collective capacity, to sit upon rockers, but has an immense series of warehouses, omnivorous and eupeptic, which swallow all manner of tithes, from grain and horseshoes to the less stable commodities of fresh fish and melons, assimilating them by admirable processes into coin of the realm.  These warehouses are in the Church (Brigham’s own private) inclosure.—­If success in my cabinet-making has moved me to give a feast, and I thereat drink more healths than are consistent with my own, the Church surely knows that fact the very next day; and as Utah recognizes no impunitive “getting drunk in the bosom of one’s family,” I am again sent for, on this occasion to pay a fine, probably exceeding the expenses of my feast.  A second offence is punished with imprisonment as well as fine; for no imprisonment avoids fine,—­this comes in every case.  The hand of the Church holds the souls of the saints by inevitable purse-strings.  But I cannot waste time by enumerating the multitudinous lapses and offences which all bring revenue to the Herring-safe.

Over all these matters Brigham Young has supreme control.  His power is the most despotic known to mankind.  Here, by the way, is the constitutionally vulnerable point of Mormonism.  If fear of establishing a bad precedent hinder the United States at any time from breaking up that nest of all disloyalty, because of its licentious marriage-institutions, Utah is still open to grave punishment, and the Administration inflicting it would have duty as well as vested right upon its side, on the ground that it stands pledged to secure to each of the nation’s constituent sections a republican form of government,—­something which Utah has never enjoyed any more than Timbuctoo.  I once asked Brigham if Dr. Bernhisel would be likely to get to Congress again.  “No,” he replied, with perfect certainty; “we shall send ——­ as our Delegate.” (I think he mentioned Colonel Kinney, but do not remember absolutely.) Whoever it was, when the time came, Brigham would send in his name to the “Deseret News,”—­whose office, like everything else valuable and powerful, is in his inclosure.  It would be printed as a