Page:The City of the Saints.djvu/289

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Chap. V.
THE PENITENTIARY.
271

however—it is curious that they do not form a company among themselves for prospecting—assert that the Church has very rich mines, which are guarded by those dragons of Danites more fiercely than the Hesperidian Gardens, and which will never be known till Miss Utah becomes Mistress Deserét. Arriving at the tall, gaunt Sugar-house—its occupation is gone, while the name remains—we examined the machinery employed in making threshing and wool-carding machines, flanges, wheels, cranks, and similar necessaries. After a visit to a nail manufactory belonging to Squire Wells, and calling upon Mrs. Harris, we entered the Penitentiary. It is a somewhat Oriental-looking building, with a large quadrangle behind the house, guarded by a wall with a walk on the summit, and pepper-caster sentry-boxes at each angle. There are cells in which the convicts are shut up at night, but one of these had lately been broken by an Indian, who had cut his way through the wall; a Hindoo "gonnoff" would soon "pike" out of a "premonitory" like this. We found in it besides the guardians only six persons, of whom two were Yutas. When I remarked to Gentiles how few were the evidences of crime, they invariably replied that, instead of half a dozen souls, half the population ought to be in the place. On our return we resumed the subject of the massacre at Carthage, in which it will be remembered that Mr. John Taylor was severely wounded, and escaped by a miracle, as it were. I told him openly that there must have been some cause for the furious proceedings of the people in Illinois, Missouri, and other places against the Latter-Day Saints; that even those who had extended hospitality to them ended by hating and expelling them, and accusing them of all possible iniquities, especially of horse-thieving, forgery, larceny, and offenses against property, which on the borders are never pardoned—was this smoke quite without fire? He heard me courteously and in perfect temper; replied that no one claimed immaculateness for the Mormons; that the net cast into the sea brought forth evil as well as good fish, and that the Prophet was one of the laborers sent into the vineyard at the eleventh hour. At the same time, that when the New Faith was stoutly struggling into existence, it was the object of detraction, odium, persecution—so, said Mr. Taylor, were the Christians in the days of Nero—that the border ruffians, forgers, horse-thieves, and other vile fellows followed the Mormons wherever they went; and, finally, that every fraud and crime was charged upon those whom the populace were disposed, by desire for confiscation's sake, to believe guilty. Besides the theologic odium there was also the political: the Saints would vote for their favorite candidates, consequently they were never without enemies. He quoted the Mormon rules: 1. Worship what you like. 2. Leave your neighbor alone. 3. Vote for whom you please; and compared their troubles to the Western, or, as it is popularly called, the Whisky insurrection in 1794, whose "dread-