and compassion to call a constable, have them
locked up, and afterwards punished in the
manner they themselves so loudly called for.
The basement of the church was used for tri-
weekly prayer-meetings, love-feasts, and other
religious observances. Monday night seemed
to be the "grand extra night" with them. The
basement was crowded with sobbing sinners,
who thumped benches, turned over tables, shook
their heads, beat their breasts, and groaned,
gasped, and shrieked out "—'men!" "—'lujah!"
"Glowry!" "A-a-a-men!" and other devotional
exclamations, until I began to think Boreas had
lent his lungs to the chief pray-er, and that
the State Asylum deputised some few score
lunatics to assist at these Monday evening
assemblies. These "sinners"—a name in which
they seemed to delight—created so much
uproar over their devotions, so many windows
had been shaken out, chairs broken, and tables
dislocated during their screaming ecstacies or
groaning agonies, while crowds of unrescued
"brands from the burning" tittered outside,
obstructing the side-walk, that a meek-looking
deputation of "respectable householders,
shopkeepers, and vestrymen" waited upon the
congregation, and politely gave them notice to
quit, with four weeks' grace to rent some other
place for their enthusiastic religious outpourings.

Those previous tenants delighted in calling
themselves "sinners;" but the present ones
ran into the opposite extreme, and claimed to be
Saints. Many of them were so much glorified,
elders informed me, that they put on their night-
gowns and nightly went to roost among their
beatified brethren in "the seventh heaven." At
what hour these privileged ones descended to
their customary coffee and rolls in the morning
none could tell, but tidings which they brought
from the other world were sometimes startling.
"Were you favoured by the Lord last night,
brother?" asked one of another. "I was,
elder." "And how is sister Jenks?" "Oh,
she's all right. She has gone up from the first
to the fourth heaven since my last visit, and is
now in the fifth! She was sitting beside our
holy prophet, Joe Smith."

All these "saints"—clean shaven, rotund,
radiant and immaculate—had full liberty to make
flying visits to any of the seven heavens whenever
convenience suited. No burden of sin and
iniquity encumbered their shoulders, like the
former proprietors of the building, but they were
so light of heart and jolly, that their band usually
opened service with one of Labitsky's waltzes,
or the grand march in Norma.

There was nothing peculiar in the church
itself; but the basement was now used for an
intelligence office, printing-press, and general
depository of beds, bedding, pots, pans, stoves,
agricultural implements, boots, shoes, and a
thousand et cætera, deposited there for safe
keeping by saints from all parts of the world in
transit to the Great Salt Lake Valley.

During spring and autumn large crowds of
these Mormon emigrants, or "Latter-Day
Saints," swarmed into St. Louis, from the east,
where ship-loads disembarked from all quarters
of the Old World. Germans, with long hair,
long pipes, fearful beards, small caps, and
much gurrulity, sat upon their bales of
bedding and iron-clasped provision-chests, gesticulating and conversing: short, stumpy, thick-set
men from Holland, in wooden shoes, and small
jackets with large plate-like buttons sewed on
near their armpits: females of the same countries,
perfect fac-similes of "buy-a-broom" women in
London—with short dresses, bare arms, wrinkled
faces, and heads tied up in handkerchiefs: while
not a few mechanics, or sturdy smock-frocked and
"navvy"-booted rustics from England, filled up
the picture daily to be seen around the basement
of this Mormon tabernacle. Proselytes from
every nation were Westward bound. Boats for
the head waters of the Missouri river were
heavily freighted with candidates for the
"promised land," while brothers and elders
industriously pushed about in all directions,
advising, counselling, and arranging for the long
trip across the plains.

Ever bent on the acquisition of knowledge, I
frequently strolled into these head-quarters of
Mormonism, and entered into social chat with
various brethren present; but could never elicit
positive information regarding their religious,
political, or social organisation. All seemed to
be profound mystery. Men, for the most part,
were pale-faced, long-haired, bright twinkling-
eyed enthusiasts and dreamers, who knew nothing
definite of Mormonism save what they had caught
from rhapsodical descriptions, and sophistical
discourses of raving emissaries scattered through
Europe, but all agreed that it was "a patriarchal
system," which, though dead for many centuries,
had been reinstated by express command of
Providence for the benefit of "elected saints,"
through the instrumentality of their prophet,
Joe Smith. Of material, worldly prosperity,
and "the divine institution of plurality in
wives," they spoke largely, and with much
enthusiasm. These two subjects seemed the
all-absorbing ambition of their lives; hence it did
not at all surprise me to find that the first and
only things seriously considered in all outfits for
the "promised land," were large supplies of
beds, blankets, and pillows!

At the close of a long discussion on the
morality of their views, which, though young, I
maintained against them with some success, I
whispered into the ear of an interesting young
wife, upon the point of departing with her
husband, "And what do you think of the plurality
of wives?" Her face instantly coloured with
indignation as she replied, promptly and haughtily,
"I should like to see him try it, when he
gets there, that's all!"

As my tour of observation on the Western
Continent included the Mormon country, I
sought the first available opportunity to
prosecute my travels; and, after some
negotiation, effected arrangements with a
government train proceeding to Utah Territory and
beyond. We started from Westport, Missouri,