IN THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. 97 



side by side with a father and mother and their prattling 

 children. To be sure the first was uncouth, but the wife was 

 quite presentable, and I much enjoyed myself. 



Dinner eaten, I procured some vegetables for my mess and 

 went back to the corral. It was a pleasure to look on 

 my companions. They all had had good dinners; for those 

 who were without money had the equivalent in the shape of 

 " portable property," which, if not their own, answered the same 

 purpose. Their faces were radiant with smiles, so different 

 from their past woe-begone looks. Some of them, I am sorry 

 to say, were a little drunk. But there was a cessation of their 

 chronic state of swearing, which partially compensated for 

 this. 



Among the group of villagers we saw an old man who told 

 me he was from Philadelphia. In this distant land we were 

 acquaintances ; in fact, we felt a little related. He seemed to 

 take much interest in me when he found out where I lived, 

 and invited me to his home. " Uncle Job," for so his neigh- 

 bors called him, dwelt in a little adobe house on the main 

 street, where he lived the anomalous life, in that polygamous 

 land, of a bachelor ; for what reason I don't know, unless it 

 was to help reduce the average. He had the patience of his 

 prononym of old, and took me over to his little house and 

 garden and showed me the mammoth vegetables he had 

 raised, and introduced me to his next door neighbor, a fair 

 Mormoness, all the while talking to me in a very voluble 

 manner. Uncle Job had a skeleton in his closet which he 

 showed me. It was a black bottle, and his frequent visits to 

 this was what made him so talkative. He denounced the 

 soldiers for coming among them, praised Brigham Young for 

 his course, and extolled the Mormon heaven as being the true 

 New Jerusalem towards which mankind should travel. He 

 told me his troubles with one of his neighbors, and, in fact, 

 was getting so affectionate and communicative, that I was fain 

 to get away from him and hie me to the corral. 



