Mr.
Street
was
very
busy
with
his
telegraphic matters—and
considering
that
he
had
eight
or
nine
hundred
miles
of
rugged, snowy, uninhabited mountains,
and
waterless, treeless, melancholy
deserts
to
traverse
with
his
wire,
it
was
natural
and
needful
that
he
should
be
as
busy
as
possible.
He
could
not
go
comfortably
along
and
cut
his
poles
by
the
road-side, either,
but
they
had
to
be
hauled
by
ox
teams
across
those
exhausting deserts—and
it
was
two
days'
journey
from
water
to
water,
in
one
or
two
of
them. Mr. Street's
contract
was
a
vast
work,
every
way
one
looked
at
it;
and
yet
to
comprehend
what
the
vague
words
"eight
hundred
miles
of
rugged
mountains
and
dismal
deserts" mean,
one
must
go
over
the
ground
in
person—pen
and
ink
descriptions
cannot
convey
the
dreary
reality
to
the
reader.
And
after
all, Mr. S.'s mightiest
difficulty
turned
out
to
be
one
which
he
had
never
taken
into
the
account
at
all.
Unto
Mormons
he
had sub-let
the
hardest
and
heaviest
half
of
his
great
undertaking,
and
all
of
a
sudden
they
concluded
that
they
were
going
to
make
little
or
nothing,
and
so
they
tranquilly
threw
their
poles
overboard
in
mountain
or
desert,
just
as
it
happened
when
they
took
the
notion,
and
drove
home
and
went
about
their
customary
business!
They
were
under
written
contract
to
Mr. Street,
but
they
did
not
care
anything
for
that.
They
said
they
would
"admire"
to
see
a "Gentile"
force
a
Mormon
to
fulfil a
losing
contract
in
Utah!
And
they
made
themselves
very
merry
over
the
matter.
Street
said—for
it
was
he
that
told
us
these
things: "I
was
in
dismay. I
was
under
heavy bonds
to
complete my
contract
in
a
given
time,
and
this
disaster
looked
very
much
like
ruin.
It
was
an
astounding
thing;
it
was
such
a
wholly
unlooked-for difficulty,
that
I
was
entirely nonplussed. I
am
a
business
man—have
always
been a
business
man—do
not
know
anything
but
business—and
so
you
can
imagine
how
like
being struck
by
lightning
it
was
to
find
myself
in
a
country
where
written
contracts
were
worthless!—that
main
security,
that
sheet- anchor,
that
absolute
necessity,
of
business. My
confidence
left me.
There
was
no
use
in
making
new
contracts—that
was
plain. I talked
with
first
one
prominent
citizen
and
then
another.
They
all
sympathized
with
me,
first
rate,
but
they
did
not
know
how
to
help
me.
But
at
last
a
Gentile
said, 'Go
to
Brigham Young!—these small
fry
cannot
do
you
any
good.' I
did
not
think
much
of
the
idea,
for
if
the
law
could
not
help
me,
what
could
an
individual
do
who
had
not
even
anything
to
do
with
either
making
the
laws
or
executing
them?
He
might
be
a
very
good
patriarch
of
a church
and
preacher
in
its
tabernacle,
but
something
sterner
than
religion
and
moral
suasion
was
needed
to
handle
a
hundred
refractory, half-civilized sub-contractors.
But
what
was
a
man
to
do? I
thought
if
Mr.
Young
could
not
do
anything
else,
he
might
probably
be
able
to
give
me
some
advice
and
a valuable hint
or
two,
and
so
I went straight
to
him
and
laid
the
whole
case
before
him.
He
said
very
little,
but
he
showed
strong
interest
all
the
way
through.
He
examined
all
the
papers
in
detail,
and
whenever
there
seemed
anything
like
a hitch,
either
in
the
papers
or
my statement,
he
would
go
back
and
take
up
the
thread
and
follow
it
patiently
out
to
an
intelligent
and
satisfactory
result.
Then
he
made
a list
of
the
contractors' names. Finally
he
said: "'Mr. Street,
this
is
all
perfectly plain.
These
contracts
are
strictly
and
legally
drawn,
and
are
duly
signed
and
certified.
These
men manifestly
entered
into
them
with
their
eyes
open. I
see
no
fault
or
flaw anywhere.' "Then Mr.
Young
turned
to
a
man
waiting
at
the
other
end
of
the
room
and
said: 'Take
this
list
of
names
to
So-and-so,
and
tell
him
to
have
these
men
here
at
such-and-such
an
hour.' "They
were
there,
to
the
minute.
So
was
I. Mr.
Young
asked
them
a
number
of
questions,
and
their
answers
made
my statement good.
Then
he
said
to
them: "'You
signed
these
contracts
and
assumed
these
obligations
of
your
own
free
will
and
accord?' "'Yes.' "'Then carry
them
out
to
the
letter,
if
it
makes
paupers
of
you! Go!' "And
they
did
go, too!
They
are
strung
across
the
deserts
now, working
like
bees.
And
I
never
hear
a
word
out
of
them. "There
is
a
batch
of
governors,
and
judges,
and
other
officials
here,
shipped
from
Washington,
and
they
maintain
the
semblance
of
a republican
form
of
government—but
the
petrified
truth
is
that
Utah
is
an
absolute
monarchy
and
Brigham
Young
is
king!" Mr.
Street
was
a
fine
man,
and
I
believe
his
story. I
knew
him
well
during
several
years
afterward
in
San Francisco.
Our
stay
in
Salt
Lake
City
amounted
to
only
two
days,
and
therefore
we
had
no
time
to
make
the
customary
inquisition
into
the
workings
of
polygamy
and
get
up
the
usual
statistics
and
deductions
preparatory
to
calling
the
attention
of
the
nation
at
large
once
more
to
the
matter. I had
the
will
to
do
it.
With
the
gushing
self-sufficiency
of
youth
I
was
feverish
to
plunge
in
headlong
and
achieve
a
great
reform
here—until I
saw
the
Mormon
women.
Then
I
was
touched. My
heart
was
wiser
than
my head.
It
warmed
toward
these
poor,
ungainly
and
pathetically "homely" creatures,
and
as
I
turned
to
hide
the
generous
moisture
in
my eyes, I said, "No—the
man
that
marries
one
of
them
has
done
an
act
of
Christian
charity
which
entitles
him
to
the
kindly
applause
of
mankind,
not
their
harsh
censure—and
the
man
that
marries
sixty
of
them
has
done
a
deed
of
open-handed
generosity
so
sublime
that
the
nations
should
stand
uncovered
in
his
presence
and
worship
in
silence." [For a
brief
sketch
of
Mormon
history,
and
the
noted
Mountain
Meadow
massacre,
see
Appendices
A
and
B. ]