it," say the Mormons, "and ought to bless me if I do it too." The girl happened to be good-looking, though, and so, to cut this gordian knot he could not untie, Brigham took her himself. So far so well. But she was not contented, or Brigham had reconsidered- the matter, or from some cause, after a few weeks he told Watt that, after all, there was force in his argument, that it was just as lawful in him as in Abraham, and, accordingly, G. D. Watt accepted his half sister to wife from the arms of Brother Brigham! This piece of complaisance recommended him to the favorable attention of the "authorities;" as a good illustration of the childlike simplicity and implicit obedience of which they so constantly preach.
What the brutalizing effects of such marriages are on the men's minds, can easily be conceived. With small houses and several wives, more than one often sleeping in each apartment, men must soon lose all decency or self-respect, and degenerate into gross and disgusting animals. Many of them frequently sleep with two of their wives in the same bed. Indeed so evident are the effects, that Heber C. Kimball does not scruple to speak of his wives, on a Sabbath, in the Tabernacle, and before an audience of over two thousand persons, as "my cows!!" This he has done on more than one occasion and the people laughed at him as at
As the Mormons are taught to believe that all their honor and "glory" in the kingdom of God, depends on the number of their wives, all their anxiety is, therefore, to obtain a large
