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distance is the great Salt lake, at our feet are broad plains and green fields, dotted with easy houses and surrounded with gardens and orchards. This is Salt Lake Valley, the Canaan of the “Latter Day Saints.” Soon we reach Ogden, one thousand and thirty-two miles from Omaha, the junction of the Union Pacific with the Central Pacific railroad, from which point Brigham Young has built a road thirty-six miles long to Salt Lake City. A visit to Brigham and the Mormons being on our programme, we here branch off, and, soon after dark, find ourselves in the midst of Mormondom at a hotel which has one landlord and three landladies. Which one of the latter attend to the culinary department I cannot say, ut she deserves the credit of giving us th best supper of tender steak and fresh brook trout that we have tasted for weeks. We notice that the landlord has a sad, downcast look, which, under other circumstances, would excite our sympathy and compassion.
Itie Wednesday evening, and we are informed that the theater, one of the Mormon institutions, is open on this and Saturday evenings, go we hasten up the street two or three squares to this temple of histrionic art, regardless of mud, vain and darkness, gaslight being here unknown. We are a little late, but paying a dollar for one[errata 1] ticket we quietly make our way to near the center of the parquette, with a view to see the audience rather than the play.
The theater is plainly finished, painted white, without gilding or fresco. Four tiers of boxes rise one above another from the parquette to the ceiling, and it will seat about two thousand five hundred people. To-night it is but partly filled, awing to the mud and rain, but the audience seems in a very appreciative and enjoyable mood. After glancing quietly around for a few minutes I asked an intelligent looking man in front of me whether President Young is here. “No sir, he is not here to-night, as usual, as he has just returned today from Provo and is tired out.” Encouraged by his polite answer I ventured to inquire if any of his wives are present. “Oh, yes, those two ladies in the proscenium or stage box are his wives, and that little boy with them is his son, and there,” pointing to a private box on the right, “are a dozen or mere of his daughters.” For the next fifteen minutes my opera glass was directed as often as could be done without attracting attention to the
- ↑ Correction: one should be amended to our
