The Saints have a glorious destiny before them, and their morality is remarkable as the beauty of the Promised Land: the soft breeze blowing over the Bowery, and the glorious sunshine outside, made the allusion highly appropriate. The Lamanites, or Indians, are a religious people. All races know a God and may be saved. After a somewhat lengthy string of sentences concerning the great tribulation coming on earth—it has been coming for the last 1800 years—he concluded with good wishes to visitors and Gentiles generally, with a solemn blessing upon the President of the United States, the territorial governor, and all such as be in authority over us, and, with an amen which was loudly re-echoed by all around, he restored his hat and resumed his seat.
Having heard much of the practical good sense which characterizes the Prophet's discourse, I was somewhat disappointed: probably the occasion had not been propitious. As regards the concluding benedictions, they are profanely compared by the Gentiles to those of the slave, who, while being branded on the hand, was ordered to say thrice, "God bless the State." The first was a blessing. So was the second. But at the third, natural indignation having mastered Sambo's philosophy, forth came a certain naughty word not softened to "darn." During the discourse, a Saint, in whose family some accident had occurred, was called out, but the accident failed to affect the riveted attention of the audience.
Then arose Mr. Heber C. Kimball, the second President. He is the model of a Methodist, a tall and powerful man, a "gentleman in black," with small, dark, piercing eyes, and clean-shaven blue face. He affects the Boanerges style, and does not at times disdain the part of Thersites: from a certain dislike to the Non-conformist rant and whine, he prefers an every-day manner of speech, which savors rather of familiarity than of reverence. The people look more amused when he speaks than when others harangue them, and they laugh readily, as almost all crowds will, at the thinnest phantom of a joke. Mr. Kimball's movements contrasted strongly with those of his predecessor; they consisted now of a stone-throwing gesture delivered on tiptoe, then of a descending movement, as
"When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist and not with stick."
He began with generalisms about humility, faithfulness, obeying counsel, and not beggaring one's neighbor. Addressing the hand-cart emigrants, newly arrived from the "sectarian world," he warned them to be on the look-out, or that every soul of them would be taken in and shaved (a laugh). Agreeing with the Prophet—Mr. Kimball is said to be his echo—in a promiscuous way concerning the morality of the Saints, he felt it notwithstanding his duty to say that among them were "some of the greatest rascals in the world" (a louder laugh, and N.B., the Mormons are never
