# Wife No. 19/Chapter 18
### CHAPTER XVIII.
#### INCREASE OF POLYGAMY. — MIXED-UP CONDITION MATRIMONIAL AFFAIRS.

* Christ alleged to be a Polygamist.
* The Men to save the Women.
* Making "Tabernacles" for little Spirits.
* The Story of certain Ladies who were Deceived.
* They Discover a Mystery.
* Their Fate.
* Orson Hyde's False Prophecy.
* Throwing Mud at Apostates.
* Death preferred to Polygamy.
* Frightful Intermarriages.
* Married his Mother-in-law.
* A Man who Married his Wife's Grandmother, Mother, and All.
* Marrying a Half-Sister.
* Marrying Nieces and Sisters.
* How Emigrant Girls were Married Off.
* Frightful Story of a Poor Young Girl.
* Polygamy and Madness.
* One Woman's Love too Little.
* How English Girls were Deceived.
* How Claude Spenser committed a Damnable Wrong.
* A Girl who was Martyred for her Religion.
* How the Bereaved Husband Acted.
* A Man with thirty-three Children.
* "They never cost him a Cent."
* A Many-Wived Saint.
* Mixed-up Condition of Marital Affairs.
HE "Reformation" was productive of nothing but evil. The most revolting and blasphemous doctrines. were taught, and between Blood-Atonement, Massacres of the Gentiles, and the worst phases of Polygamous Marriage, there was nothing good in the Territory. The whole system of Mormon religion was a mass of revolting crime and wickedness. Bigotry was at flood-tide, and fanaticism ruled reason. The very thought of it brings a shudder. The most horrible things were taught from the ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/323 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/324 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/325 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/326 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/327 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/328 ​sealed again to him, and was taken to his home, a miserable, comfortless place, where he had five wives already living in poverty and the most terrible degradation. Huddled together like so many animals, they respected neither the laws of decency nor morality. Hannah was there but a short time before she became hopelessly insane. She is living still, but the light of reason has gone out for ever, quenched by the horrors of a system which she always The Happy Home of a Polygamist. loathed. Her sister, Margaret, still drags on a miserable, hopeless existence, not much better off than the poor, unfortunate maniac. She is a moral and physical wreck, and owes her depraved condition to the cause that made her sister a mental ruin.
Life opened brightly enough for these girls in their home among the Scottish hills, but the curse of Mormonism found them out, and then there was nothing but wretchedness and despair for them.
Incidents like these have multiplied from the beginning ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/330 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/331 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/332 ​her with vain longings to hear again the tender words that were never spoken now, and to lean, in her mortal weakness, on the arm that she, so short a time ago, had fondly hoped would be her support, even down to the brink of death. It is easy to say of love unworthily bestowed, —
but many a wronged and forsaken wife could tell you that these are only idle words.
Many may wonder if the dying girl's sister had no compunction, no remorse for the part she was playing in this tragedy. None; for so completely was she carried away by the fanaticism with which she had been inspired, that she actually believed she was doing God service in trampling on the holiest feelings of her own nature, and inflicting upon her sister the most cruel wrong that one woman can suffer at the hands of another.
The weary journey was ended at length, and the wanderers reached the Valley which was henceforth to be their ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/334 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/335