Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1891-02-15

@hS WoAA1 an @A-N~
itself is about 100 feet high. and its towers
will be nearly 200. And that is all there is
| of it unless you choose to inspect more
closely, always reading the Book Of Nor
mon as you walk. Then the wondrous
puerility of what 1 suppose we must call the
design becomes apparent. I am wrong;
there is no design. These men, directly in
spired from on high, heaped stone on stone
and pillar on pillar without achieving either
dignity, relief or interest. There is over the
! main door some pitiful scratching in stone
representing the All Seeing Eye, the Ma
sonic grip, the sun, moon and stars and,
perhaps, other skittles.
The fatness and meanuess of the thing
almost make you weep when you look at
the magnificent granite in blocks strewn
abroad and the skill that So, 000, 900 could
have called INTO the aid of the church. 1t
is as though a child had said: "Let us
draw a great big fine house-iner than any
house that ever was" and in that desire had
lsboriously smudged along with a ruler and
pencil, piling meaningless straight lines
on compass drawn curves, with his tongue
following every movement OF the lnapt
hand. Then sat / down on a wheelbarrow
and read the Book of Mormon. andlbehold
the spirit of the book was the spirit of the
stone before me. The simple Joseph and
Hiram Smith struggling to create anew
Bible when they knew nothing of the COM
parstive history of the Old and New Testa-
ment, and the inspired architect muddIing
with his bricks-they were brothers.
Authority of the Book of Mormon.
1t is written, aud all the world has read
that to Joseph Smith an angel came down
from heaven with a pair of celestial gig
lamps, whereby he was marvelousIy enabled
to interpret certain plates of gold scrubbed
~ NTH la4o onl eorofobae o-l l,r--z-.l
by him in the ground, which plates Joseph
Smith did translate-only ne spelled the
mysterious characters "caractors"-and out
of the dots and scratches produced a vol
ume of 600 closely printed pages, containing
the Books of Nephi, first and second; Jacob,
Enos, Jarom, Omni, Mormon, Mosiah, the
record of Zeniff, the Book of Alma Hola-
man, the third of Nephi, the fourth another
Book of Mormon, the Book of Ether (the
whole thing is a powerful anesthetic, by the
way) and a final Book OF Moroni. Three
men, of whom one 1 believe is now living,
bear solemn witness that the angel with the
spectacles appeared unto them; eight other
men swear solemnly that they have seen the
golden plates of the revelation, and upon
this testimony the Book of Mormon stands.
The Mormon Bible begins at the days of
Zedekiah, King OF Judah, and ends in a
wild and weltering quagmire of tribal fights,
fbs of revelation and wholesale thefts from
the Bible. Very sincerely did ] sympathize
with the inspired brothers as I waded
through their joint production. As q
humble fellow worker in the field OF fiction
1 knew h it was to get good names for
ones characters. But Joseph and Hiram
were harder bestead than ever I have been,
and holder men to boot They created
Teancum and Co~risntumy, Pahoran, Kish-
kumen and Gadianton and other priceless
names which the memory does not hold;
but OF geography they wisely steered clear
and were astutely vague as to the localities
of places, because you see they were by no
means certain what lay in the next county
to their OWL.
Wonderful Accompl lis hments In Print.
They marched and countermarched blood
thirsty armies across their pages, and added
new and amazing chapters to the records of
the New Testament and reorganized the
heavens and the earth as it is always lawful
to do in print. But they could not achieve
style, and il was foolish of them to let into
their wierd Mosaic pieces of the genuine
Bible wherever the laboring pan dropped
from its toilsome parody to q sentence or
two of vile, bad English or downright
penny dreadfulism," such as "Moses said
unto the people of Israel, Great Scott. what
air you doing?'" There is no sentence in
the Book of Mormon word for word like the
foregoing, but the general tone is not widely
different.
Then 1 went a bout the streets and peeped
into peoples front windows, and the decor
ations upon the tables were after the man,
ner of the year 1850. Main street was full
of country folk from the desert come in to
trade with the Zion Mercantile Cooperative
Institute. The church, I fancy, looks after
the finances of this thing and it consequent
ly pays good dividends.
Don't Marry to Get Beauty.
The faces of the women are not lovely.
Indeed, but for the certainty that ugly per
sons are just as irrational in the matter of
undivided love as the beautiful, it seems
that polygamy was a blessed institution for
the women. and that only the dread threats
of the spiritual power could drive the hulk
ing board-faced men into it. The women
wore hideous garments and the men ap-
pesred to be tied up with string. They
would market all that afternoon and ON
Sunday go to the praying place. I tried to
talk to q few Of them, but they spoke strange
tongues and stared and behaved like cows.
Yet, one woman, and not an altogether
ugly one, conided to me that she hated the
idea of Salt Lake City being turned into q
show place Tor the amusement of the
Gentiles.
"If we ave our own institutions that amt
no reason why people should come ere and
stare at us, his it7"
The dropped "h" betrayed her.
"And when did you leave E~nglandf" I
said.
Summer of "a. 1 am Dorset" she said.
"The Mormon agents was very good to MS
and we was very poor. Now we're better of
my father an mother an me-"
"Then you like the State?"
She misunderstood AT first. ooh, I amt
Twin in the state Of polygamy. Not me,
yet. I amt married. like where I am.
Eve got things O. my own-and some land"
"But I suppose you will"
"Not me. I amt like them Swedes an
Danes, I amt got nothin' to say for or
against polyamy. It's the Elders business.
going on much longer. You'll ear them in
the 'ouse to-morrer talkin' as if it was
spreadin' all over America. The Swedes
they think it his. I know it hisn't."
But you've got your land all right?"
"Oh, yes, we've got our lam an we never
say aught against polygamy O. course
father an mother an me-"
The Sights of Salt Lake CITY.
should liked to have spoken to the
maiden at length but she dived into Inc
Zion Coop. and a man captured me saying
that 1t was my boundep duty TO see the
sights of Salt Lake. These comprised the
egg-shaped Tabernacle, the Beehive and town
houses of Brigham Young. the same great
rufian's tomb with assorted samples of his
wives sleeping round him Gust as the IL
faithful ones sleep round the ashes of Run
jt Singh outside Fort Lahoreyand one or
two other curiosities. But all these things
have been described by ADLER pens than
mine. The animal houses where Brigham.
used to pack his wives are grubby villas;