# Utah and the Mormons/Chapter 18

CHAPTER XVIII.
* Social Intercourse.
* Governor's Party.
* Influence of Polygamy upon Amusements.
* Style of Building.
* Amusing Scenes growing out of Polygamy.
* Superstition.
* Endowment Robes.
* Initiation Ceremonies.
* The Curse.
* The Patriarch and his Blessings.
* Gift of Tongues.
* Notions on Slavery.
The Mormons are a social people. They have erected a large building called "Social Hall," with express reference to their gratification in this respect, and the building is so arranged as to answer the double purpose of a theatre and a place for social parties. In the basement is a kitchen, having all the means and ap​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/312 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/313 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/314 ​in the same room, soon begin to feel that they might as well be the common property each of a dozen men. I have been in small huts where the man and his two wives lodged in the only room in the house. I was in a wretched hut, in a small village on Utah Lake, where the man and his two wives and grown-up daughter lodged in the same room, containing two beds: it was their parlor, kitchen, and bed-room. It was a manifest struggle between poverty and licentiousness, and there was filth enough to manure a garden. A child in Utah who knows his own father is wiser than common children—wiser even than his mother, who, in many instances, would be exceedingly puzzled to fix the paternity.
Polygamy is introducing a new style of building at Salt Lake City. A man with half a dozen wives builds, if he can, a long, low dwelling, having six entrances ​from the outside; and when he takes in a new wife, if able to do so, adds another apartment. The object is to keep the women and babies, as much as possible, Image missingDR. CLINTON'S HAREM. apart, and prevent those terrible cat-fights which sometimes occur, with all the accompaniments of Billingsgate, torn caps, and broken broom-sticks. As the "divine institution" extends, these buildings increase, and in a few years the city will look like a collection of barracks for the accommodation of soldiers. Some have separate buildings in parts of the city remote from each other, and others have farm-houses, and the wives are thus kept separate, the husband dividing his time between them all.
Some funny scenes occur occasionally. Joseph Young, a brother of Brigham, had a wife who was more of a man than himself, and managed to ward off plurality for some time. But he belonged to the blood-​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/317 ​hankering after some of its privileges. On the way over the Plains they encountered scattered parties of Mormon emigrants, from whom the princess ascertained, with some distinctness, the true state of things in the Valley of Salt. In connection with this intelligence, her attention became disagreeably fixed upon some significant signs of intimacy between Ap and a servant-girl; and, to cap the climax, the girl began to assume the airs of an equal. The Amazon
until an overt act of treason took place, when, pouncing upon her victim unexpectedly, she tore her clothes from her body; and in the war of words which ensued, Queen No. 2 dropped from her mouth a set of teeth, which Dan, like a loving husband, had provided for her, but which Queen No. 1 stamped into the ground in her fury, utterly destroying their capacity for grinding any more food.
Any number of anecdotes might be related illustrative of the same subject: one more must suffice. This was a tragi-comic scene, connected with no less a personage than W. W. Phelps, King's Jester, Almanac-maker, &c., &c. His wife, it seems, had given her consent, as she thought, to his enlarging his domestic borders by taking in another helpmate; but, after the deed was done, found herself so goaded with jealousy, that the immortal W. W. was compelled to lodge the new-comer elsewhere than under the homestead roof. This allayed some of the irritation; but still, when he was absent attending upon the new wife, the old one felt so much annoyed, that she was impelled to consti​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/319 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/320 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/321 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/322 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/323 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/324 ​Page:Utah-and-the-Mormons.djvu/325