18 Rod, Gun, and Palette in the High Rockies 



other deeply interested listeners, in the intervals of borrowing 

 matches from me. 



What a valley! What a man! What a people; trained in 

 habits of industry, sobriety, thrift, and union to a specific code 

 of religious and social obligation, he brought together. Who? 

 Brigham Young. One point of William's summary is an attention- 

 compelling reason for the tenet that has occasioned the bitterest 

 attacks upon the Mormon church. "The institution of plural 

 wives, a social necessity to provide population for the land, was 

 in the beginning initiated by Joseph Smith and Brigham Young 

 as a reward for conspicuous morality, thrift, industry, and social 

 responsibility. Consequently, for the most part, the duty fell 

 only to those financially capable of properly caring for more than 

 one wife, and who had been proved socially and morally worthy. 

 And heredity holding good, those qualities have been handed down 

 to a succeeding generation of a greater number than would other- 

 wise have been possible." 



It seems an explanation worth considering, and by this time 

 arrived at Salt Lake City, the bunch, passing up town by auto- 

 mobile, seem agreed on the proposition that Brigham Young is 

 entitled to rank among the great civilizers of the western hemi- 

 sphere, qualified by William's statement that Smith and he were 

 themselves succeeded by very able men. 



Salt Lake City gives one an impression of wide, clean, well- 

 kept streets, the majesty of the hills crowning their perspective. 

 Great trees rank the sidewalks. There is a warm sun in a cloudless 

 sky. We pass the temple. It is of bastard Gothic — an archi- 

 tecturally shameless building, unspeakably bad, but echoing the 

 spirit of its time and people. In the square adjoining is a bronze 

 monument to the first settlers of the valley and founders of the 

 city. Mormon farmers are identified among the healthy looking, 

 smoothly moving crowds on the streets. There is a salt 

 tang in the air. One sees the farmer face again. What's it 

 like? I've got it: Boer. After all, why not? A corresponding 

 environment and occupation, a hard and fast creed, patriarchal 

 authority over his women-kind — certainly the same type of face 

 may come. 



At a hat store. Art and Bill try a cowboy hat upon me. It 

 sits most comfortably, and the broad brim is a comfort to the eyes. 



