The Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1877-1885, 1882-06-23
Friday. June 23. 1882.
Friday. June q. 1882
POLYGAMY TO-DAY.
One Reason Why Plural Marriages Must Surely
Cease in the near
Future.
POLYGAMY TODAY.
Especial Correspondence

| SALT LAKE CITY, June 3.-Polyyamy, as
problem, reminds me of a hedgehog.
But as the hedgehog may not be a familiar
| American Institution, let me explain. The
hedgehog, then, is a small animal with a
very elastic skin, closely set all over with
strong sharp spines. A rural life is all its
joy. In habits and character it assimilates
somewhat to the Mormon peasant, being
inoffensive, useful industrious, prolific and
largely frugivorous. But when hunted it
is otherwise. For the hedgehog, if closely
pursued. takes hold of its ears with its
hind paws and tucking its nose into the
middle of its stomach, rolls itself into q
perfect ball. The spines then stand out
straight and in every direction
equally. Now, thus defended
does the hedgehog shun the pub
lie eye? On the contrary, it lies out in
the full sunlight, in the middle of the side
walk or the dusty road, challenge TO the
inqnisitive attention of every passing dog.
And you can no more keep q dog from
going out of its way to reconnoitre the
queer looking object than you can keep
needles away from loadstones. They do
not all behave the same to it, though. The
mutton headed dogs sit down by it and go
away after q bit in a kind of brown study.
The silly ones smell it too close, and go off
down the road in streak of dust and yelp.
The experienced dogs sniff at it and trot
on. ''Only that ID hedgehog again.
they say. The thoughtless prick their
noses and lose their temper, and then
prick their noses worse and lose their
tempers more. The puppy barks at it re-
motely, receding every time by the recoi1
of its back, till it banks itself backwards
into the opposite ditch The satirist ap-
proaches it cynically, and pretending to
mistake it for stone, stops, and-passcs
on, epres rerpressi0n du der5sser mepris.
But the hedgehog lies perfectly still, as
round and as shiny as ever, out in the mid
die of the high road. All the dogs arc
much the same to it. Some roll it little
one way and some roll it little the other
1t gets dusty or it gets wet. But there it
lies as inscrutable, puzzling and odious to
passing dogs as ever. Bye and bye when
it is dark and everybody has get tired of
poking at it and shifting it and wondering
at it, the hedgehog will quietly unroll it
self and creep away to some secluded spot
between orchard and cornfield and remote
from the highways of men and their dogs.
/ am particularly led to this moralizing
to day, because when at Manti one of my
companions, a Mormon, was enumerating at
my request some of the more extraordinary
anomalies that he knew of in recent po-.
lygamy. / took notes of few and they
seem to me sufficiently puzzling to justify
place in these letters.
young and very pretty girl, in t'the
upper ten of Mormonism, married young
man of her own class, but stipulated be
for arriaf baf ha OH a
ond wife as soon as he could afford to do
So Against his win she has now kept him
to his promise.
A young couple were engaged, but
qnarreled, aud the lover out of pique mar
ried another lady. Two years later, his
first love, having refused other offers In
the meantime, married him. as his second
wife.
A man having married second wife to
please himself, married q third to please
his first.
A couple about to be married made an
agreement between themselves that the
husbands second wife should be one of
the relatives of the first wife. The lady
who was selected refused and thu husband
remained true to his promise for ten years
At the end of this time his first wife vol
UNFAIRLY chose another mate for HIM
The belle of the settlement. Gentle,
refused monogamist offers of marriage,
and married Mormon who had two wives
already.
A girl, distracted between hST love for
her sutton and her love for her mother, |
in her affections by stipulat-
ing that he should marry both her mother
and herself, which he did
A girl, a GENTLE, bitterly opposed at
first to polygamy, married a polygamist at
the solicitation of his first wife, her great
friend.
Two girls were good friends. aps @>- Of