America society splits into two parts—man and woman—even more readily than in England; each sex is freer and happier in the company of its congeners. At Great Salt Lake City there is a gloom like that which the late Professor H. H. Wilson described as being cast by the invading Moslem over the innocent gayety of the primitive Hindoo. The choice egotism of the heart called Love—that is to say, the propensity elevated by sentiment, and not undirected by reason, subsides into a calm and unimpassioned domestic attachment: romance and reverence are transferred, with the true Mormon concentration, from love and liberty to religion and the Church. The consent of the first wife to a rival is seldom refused, and a ménage à trois, in the Mormon sense of the phrase, is fatal to the development of that tender tie which must be confined to two. In its stead there is household comfort, affection, circumspect friendship, and domestic discipline. Womanhood is not petted and spoiled as in the Eastern States; the inevitable cyclical revolution, indeed, has rather placed her below par, where, however, I believe her to be happier than when set upon an uncomfortable and unnatural eminence.
It will be asked, What view does the softer sex take of polygyny? A few, mostly from the Old Country, lament that Mr. Joseph Smith ever asked of the Creator that question which was answered in the affirmative. A very few, like the Curia Electa, Emma, the first wife of Mr. Joseph Smith—who said of her, by-the-by, that she could not be contented in heaven without rule—apostatize, and become Mrs. Bridemann. The many are, as might be expected of the easily-moulded weaker vessel, which proves its inferior position by the delicate flattery of imitation, more in favor of polygyny than the stronger.
For the attachment of the women of the Saints to the doctrine of plurality there are many reasons. The Mormon prophets have expended all their arts upon this end, well knowing that without the hearty co-operation of mothers and wives, sisters and daughters, no institution can live long. They have bribed them with promises of Paradise—they have subjugated them with threats of annihilation. With them, once a Mormon always a Mormon. I have said that a modified reaction respecting the community of Saints has set in throughout the States; people no longer wonder that their missionaries do not show horns and cloven feet, and the federal officer, the itinerant politician, the platform orator, and the place-seeking demagogue, can no longer make political capital by bullying, oppressing, and abusing them. The tide has turned, and will turn yet more. But the individual still suffers: the apostate Mormon is looked upon by other people as a scamp or a knave, and the woman worse than a prostitute. Again, all the fervor of a new faith burns in their bosoms with a heat which we can little appreciate, and the revelation of Mr. Joseph Smith is considered on this point as superior to the Christian as the latter is in others
