STEEP TRAILS 



thanked us for the pleasure of our querulous 

 conversation, removed his hat, and bowed 

 lowly in a sort of Uriah Heep manner, and 

 then went to his humble home. How many- 

 humble wives it contained, we did not learn. 



Fine specimens of manhood are by no means 

 wanting, but the number of people one meets 

 here who have some physical defect or who 

 attract one's attention by some mental pecu- 

 liarity that manifests itself through the eyes, 

 is astonishingly great in so small a city. It 

 would evidently be unfair to attribute these 

 defects to Mormonism, though Mormonism 

 has undoubtedly been the magnet that elected 

 and drew these strange people together from 

 all parts of the world. 



But however "the pecuUar doctrines" and 

 "pecuhar practices" of Mormonism have 

 affected the bodies and the minds of the old 

 Saints, the little Latter-Day boys and girls are 

 as happy and natural as possible, running wild, 

 with plenty of good hearty parental indulgence, 

 playing, fighting, gathering flowers in delight- 

 ful innocence; and when we consider that most 

 of the parents have been drawn from the thickly 

 settled portion of the Old World, where they 

 have long suffered the repression of hunger and 

 hard toil, these Mormon children, "Utah's best 

 crop," seem remarkably bright and promising. 



112 



