# Wife No. 19/Chapter 17
### CHAPTER XVII.
#### TROUBLES IN OUR OWN FAMILY. — LOUISE COMES UPON THE SCENE.

* Increase of Polygamy.
* Marrying going on Day and Night.
* "Taking a Wife and Buying a Cow."
* A Faithful Husband in a Fix.
* How Men get "Married on the Sly."
* How Wives were Driven Crazy by their Wrongs.
* My Father Marries Considerably.
* He "Goes in " for the Hand-Cart Girls.
* Marries a Couple to Begin with.
* Takes a Third the same Month.
* Rapid Increase of his "Kingdom."
* How the Girls Chose Husbands.
* Instructing the New Wives in our Family.
* Louise doesn't want to Work.
* My Father goes on Mission Again.
* Louise Flirts and Rebels.
* She is Scolded and Repents.
* Goes to Bed and Weeps.
* Bestows her Goods on the Family.
* "Lizzie" Interviews Her.
* She Poisons Herself.
* Is a "Long Time Dying."
* She gets a Strong Dose of Cayenne.
* Is sent on her Travels.
* The Last we Heard of Her.
Only a Wife out of the Way.NOTHER immediate effect of the "Reformation" was to increase the practice of polygamy. To alter an old rhyme to suit the occasion, —
Marrying and giving in marriage was carried on to such an extent, that, as in the old days of the first "Endowments" in Nauvoo Temple, the ceremony of sealing was literally going on day and night. "The man who refuses to enter poly​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/305 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/306 ​tion by the total neglect of her husband, that she determined to take her own life, since it had grown such a burden that it was intolerable to bear.
One night, in the dead of winter, the snow falling thick and fast, and the wind sweeping down the mountains and through the cañons, cutting to the very bone, as only a mountain wind can, she wrapped a tattered shawl about her, and rushed madly through the night and the snow to the river, intending to lay down her life and her miseries Life a Burden. together. With a wild prayer for mercy, she was about to throw herself into the water, when she was restrained by a strong, imperative hand, and her husband's voice, hissing angrily in her ear, bade her go home and not make a fool of herself.
He was on his way home, or, rather, to his first wife's house, for a change of linen, that he might attend his second and more favored wife to a party, when he caught sight of the flying figure, and, suspecting her intentions, followed her swiftly, and was just in season to prevent her from taking the fatal step.
This last acquisition proved to be anything but an agreeable one, and she made plenty of trouble for us all. When she offered herself to my father, after having been counselled by the authorities to do so, he received her proposition somewhat coolly and cautiously, for, to tell the truth, he would much have preferred to make his own selection, and Louise (for that was her name) would, most emphatically, have not been his choice. Yet he would have been openly ridiculed, and held up to derision in the Tabernacle, had he ventured to refuse; so there was nothing to do but to take her, and make the best of it.
He had been so long absent that his affairs were by no means in a flourishing condition, and he needed all the assistance he could obtain from his wives. My mother and Elizabeth were both hard-working women, and as hard as they had labored during their husband's absence, they did ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/314 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/315 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/316 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/317 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/318 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/319 ​Page:Wife No 19.djvu/320 ​While there she suddenly went away one day, taking her husband's money and leaving him behind. When next heard from, she was on her way to England. Her last husband made no attempt to follow her, but returned to Utah without either money or wife, yet entirely reconciled to the loss of one, since it had been the means of ridding him of the other.
Louise was the only one of all my father's wives who ever made the least trouble. The rest of them were good women, doing their best to make things pleasant. They did not like a polygamous life, and only endured it because they thought they must. They were not happy women, — no women in polygamy are happy, however loudly they may claim to be, — and they made no pretence of being. Neither did they quarrel with each other, or complain of one another to their husband. Whatever difficulties they might have they settled among themselves, and did not trouble any outsiders. In fact, in my father's family the best side of a polygamous life was shown, but the best side was by no means a bright one.
This episode of Louise shows the absurdity of marrying without previous acquaintance, and also the miseries that may be endured by other wives when there is one bad woman in their midst.