My father leaned over the counter, like a lawyer in court, and said, “Do you, Brother Thomas, consider yourself a Jew?”
“Why, of course not,” he answered indignantly. “There isn’t a drop of Jewish blood on either side of the family. We’re Scotch-Irish, and English, right on back.”
“Then you’re a Gentile?”
“Naturally. Confound it, do I look Jewish?”
“So—you’re a what, did you say?”
“Gen—Saint,” cried Thomas, turning pale. “See here, Brother McPheeters, I don’t know the purpose of this, but it isn’t healthy talk. Just you get back to work—there’s a customer, so drop the nonsense and get busy.”
“Good morning, madam, good morning,” cried my father, sweeping forward in his most flourishy manner. “What can we do for you? We’re running a special on Gents’ Hose and Gaiters. We’re pushing them, three sets for the quarter. On a somewhat different level, we’ve got a secondhand piano knocked down very reasonable. Two No. 3 steel buttons? Certainly, Sister. That will be three cents. And we thank you. It’s warm for this time of year.” He bowed her out, and I left. I’d heard all I cared to for one day.
Two nights later we went to Service at the Bowery. Emigrants were permitted to attend, but not to take part. It was interesting, though fuzzy in spots. I never saw anything quite like it in the religious line. One of the main Mormon notions was that people should approach worship in a cheerful and happy spirit, so as to let the good thoughts in, and they often told how Joseph Smith, in Missouri, would greet a pious, long-faced convert by offering to wrestle him in the middle of a public street. In that way he eased the tension and made way for the good fun to follow.
To me, this bunch seemed contradictory. They preached sport and jollity, holding dances, parties, hayrides and all, but for those who broke the rules there was an underlying threat of punishment that was downright scary. They were scary, these Mormon leaders: there wasn’t any bluff to them. Several times that winter they sent out posses to overhaul and return, from hundreds of miles off, backsliders who had crossed them in some way, even women.
Anyhow, before this service at the Bowery, they had the Nauvoo Brass Band out, and it played anthems, marches, and waltzes, preparing the minds for the sermon to follow.
When everybody was assembled, the bishops and the elders filed in, and things opened up with a Mormon hymn: my father copied it down:
Thrones shall totter, Babel fall,
Satan reign no more at all;
Saints shall gain the victory,
Truth prevail over land and sea.
Gentile tyrants sink to Hell,
Now is the day of Israel.
There were other verses just as ornery, and the people joined in and made the windows rattle. I looked at my father, who had a hymn book open and was braying like a jackass, though why he should have been so eager to jump on the Gentiles, I don’t know. It was unsettling; you could hear him above all the rest. He always sang so back in Louisville, too, in a kind of falsey-strained voice that was supposed to sound pious, I reckon, but he didn’t have the religion of a polecat, as everybody knew.
After the hymn, the people sat down with the rustly stirring they always make at an intermission in church, joggling the books in the slots, fixing their skirts, rearranging their feet, clearing their throats, and so on. Then Elder Ezra T. Benson gave a report on his committee’s road-work, saying how they’d drawn on the Treasury for the money appropriated, and after that an elder got up and made a long-winded string of announcements, some of them downright curious. He led off by saying that the California Lion had recently been seen, and even killed, in this Valley, according to reports, but he got a general laugh by remarking, “It’s only a rumor; I haven’t saw one myself. I’d be obliged if somebody would show me a stuffed skin.” Some of the Mormons around us—men scrubbed up with their neck skin red and cracked from working in the sun, women in bonnets, twisting and turning to see what their neighbors had on, same as congregations everywhere—laughed so loud they almost busted their sides. They enjoyed a good joke as much as anyone.
The announcements droned on. On Tuesday, two gardens had been damaged by emigrants’ cattle, which cost the owners seventy-four dollars in fines. Would the emigrants kindly camp a little further from the city, “thereby saving their money and leaving the vegetables to grow? Thank you.” An Elder Bullock had married a young couple named Throgmorton during the week, and afterward supped on green peas. The Council of Health would meet Wednesdays hereafter, and give advice gratis, from 3 to 4 P.M. The Utes were getting uppity again and had attacked a Snake village nearby, burning six lodges. It looked as if they might have to be punished some more. The Stake of Zion in the Sandwich Islands was prospering, according to the latest report of Apostle Parley B. Pratt there, and soon would be sending Hawaiian converts to Salt Lake City. As to the Stakes in Europe, converts were piled up in those countries—specially England and Wales—by the hundreds of thousands, waiting to come to America. Thirty-five thousand were said to be collected at Liverpool alone. The slave trade on the African coast was very brisk just now, the average price of souls on the current market being thirty-two dollars. Thursday evening a concert would be held at the Tithing and Post Onice, “when we shall endeavor to introduce a variety of sentimental and comic pieces which will be new to the people of Deseret generally, together with some original pieces. Those who love music will have the privilege of enjoying it for a few hours, at a small cost.”
And so on.
While all the talk went on, a Welsh interpreter, a squatty little man with a bald head and black-rimmed eyes, from maybe not yet getting all the coal dust out, stood in the left-hand aisle and interpreted. There were several hundred Welsh Mormons in Salt Lake, and more in other settlements of America, not yet arrived out here, and most of these couldn’t speak English, made noises that sounded like somebody plucking the strings of a bass violin, with a lot of “lud wud duds,” and such like. So they had this Welsh interpreter in church.
After the announcements, they said we were in for a treat, in addition to the regular sermon that evening, which was by an Elder Griggs. Brigham Young himself was going to say a few words. This was always enjoyable, because he was a good speaker—exciting, and what Coe described as “occasionally eloquent,” and because of his superior profanity. All of these Mormons used words that other people would consider scandalous, but Brigham Young had the widest vocabulary. He could make the best swearers among them sound dull. People envied him, but they weren’t jealous. A thing like that is a gift, and, to give them credit, these Mormons were open-minded enough to recognize it.
This evening the Prophet’s remarks were about “the new fornication pants,” which buttoned up the front. A lot of us didn’t entirely get his drift, though I saw some women turn red, but his way of stating it was enjoyed by all. “The Church is against these pants,” he said, but I won’t tell everything he said. “They’re an invention of the devil. They make things too easy; it’s a temptation, and takes your mind off your work. I heard of a case in San Francisco where a man’s hardly had his buttoned up since he got them. If I can help it, the Latter-Day Saints of the Church of Jesus Christ will wear pants that open on the sides; they’re plenty good enough, and speedy enough, for us in Salt Lake City. And I hope the women don’t encourage things to the contrary.”
It’s hard to get the religious flavor of his address into a book meant for family use, but he was, as stated, an uncommonly interesting speaker. My father put some exact phrases into his Journals, but he marked that section “Private and Personal,” and later we met a Lieutenant Gunnison, of the Army Engineers, who planned to write a complete, honest book on the Mormons, but he said he would only “mention the profanity in salvo, and not do any sharp-shooting.” Still and all, he did put in some pretty raw stuff about Joseph Smith, on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, but I’ll tell all that in good time.
Elder Griggs now arose and bored everybody half-wi
tted with a windy discourse on “doctrine.” I don’t think a soul understood it, least of all Griggs. It was about the so-called Melchizedek priesthood, and somebody named Michael, who had hair made out of wool, which sounds likely, and the Noachian deluge, in the days of Peleg, and a place called Beulah Land, which I searched for in a geography book, but couldn’t find anything closer than Bolivia, so I reckon that’s what he meant. Altogether, it was as sapping an ordeal as I could remember. Neither was I able to get in position to snooze; the seats were too hard.
After this, they came to the best part of the service. These Mormons believed that when the spirit moved a person, they were apt to burst out in an “unknown tongue.” So a period was set aside toward the end when one after another could get up and make whatever noises came natural. Sometimes it was perfectly straightaway, in English, and concerned with misdoing or temptation or sin. But often all hell broke loose, so to speak. This evening a young farmer sprang to his feet, was recognized by the chair as Hiram Snow, and told (did it very well, too) how he had been on a hay-ride and the younger sister of a friend of his wife’s had persisted in tickling his nose with a straw, lying there against him in the hay, and as they rode along, he had a very strong notion to slip his hand inside her shift. But did he do it? “I did not,” he said. “Only once, and not very far. At the eleventh hour, the dear blessed Jesus whispered in my ear—‘Leave that virgin be. She can get you into a peck of trouble.’ ”
It was noticeable from the people nodding their heads that they approved of his upright behavior under stress, and he sat down looking self-satisfied and noble. This airing of people’s secrets may have been healthy; you could just feel the room crackle with excitement. Then a stout woman in an outlandish feathered bonnet jumped up, lay back her head like a chicken’s and began to holler, “Whoodledee whoodledee whoodledee geezledee geezledee gum.” It was outlandish. It gave me the goose-pimples. I commenced to look around for the exit, because it seemed like a pretty good chance they’d wind things up in a general free-for-all. But presently she tuckered out, and with a dying cackle or two, which sounded like “Goozoo, goozoo,” she flopped down, and her neighbors began to fan her, very anxious and kind.
Right here we found that any other member of the congregation, hearing this kind of uproar, was legally entitled to get up and claim that God had made him that person’s “interpreter,” and sure enough, a fellow did just so. “Sister Crenshaw was trying to convey that the dear Lord visited her in a dream last night and told her to forgive Sister Whitesides for calling her a big-mouthed frump,” he said. “Praise be for the glorious revelation.” Everybody baaed “?-men!” then another woman rose up, weaving from side to side, and said exactly as follows—both Lieutenant Gunnison and my father wrote it down:
“Melai, meli, melo, melooey.”
But as soon as she fell back, a very waggish-looking young man that I’d noticed before, because of his mischievous eyes, got up straightaway to cry:
“Dear me, dear me. I don’t interpret it fully, but Sister Burkhardt has just said, ‘My leg, my knee, my thigh, my—’ ”
There was a shocked gasp from the audience, not at the word itself, because anybody was apt to say that around here, but because her mind was straying in such coarse regions whilst in church.
The general feeling was that this young fellow had made up his translation in the interest of sport. And afterward we heard he was hauled up before the Council to be punished. But he stuck to his story, insisting that his interpretation was “in the spirit,” and they let him off with a rebuke.
No matter how you viewed it, this was a bang-up meeting, full of surprises. I don’t recall when I ever enjoyed church quite so much. If you buckled down on this Mormonism, it seemed like a very good thing. If it didn’t do anything else, it kept people from getting overly bored.
Chapter XXXI
It was now so late in the year that Mr. Kissel decided to let the farm job go. He continued working at the University while my father helped Brother Thomas tend store and Mr. Coe got a good jump on his book. Late one night, when I was supposed to be asleep, I heard them talking about sending me to school, and my heart skipped three or four beats.
“It isn’t as though the boy were usefully engaged,” said my father. “He and the Indian girl go fishing, and he helps Othello with chores, but the bald truth is that he hasn’t nearly enough to keep him busy.”
I didn’t waste a minute next day, but went down and got a job on Brigham Young’s pet project, his silkworm nursery, where they’d had a sign out: “Boy Wanted.” This scheme didn’t figure to break my back, either. It was nothing but a big room that had a lot of wire cages with imported silkworms in them, chewing away on mulberry leaves. It wasn’t fit work for a man, so they’d decided to hire a boy instead. All I had to do was feed the leaves to the worms. In other words, keep a sharp eye out, so that when a bunch gnawed its way clear—throw in some more leaves.
Eventually this way they were supposed to come up with silk. But somehow they never did. The Prophet dropped in now and then to check—it was his favorite place, almost. He’d look at me pretty sour, as though I’d misfired on the silk. It was annoysome. I didn’t have anything to do with it; I couldn’t make them give silk, and I told him so, said, “You can drive a horse to water, sir, but you can’t make him drink.”
“Very apt,” he remarked, not amused.
I said, “I’ll tell you what I suggest, if you don’t mind—I suggest prayer. If one or two of the leading elders got down on their knees and worked with these chaps, same as with a convert, it might get them over the hump.”
“Confine your attentions to the leaves,” he said, and left.
Even with this job, which took six hours a day, I failed to get off scot-free on the schooling. Mr. Coe volunteered to my father that he’d tutor Po-Povi and me awhile each evening before supper “in English literature and the classics.”
“That’s handsome of you, Coe,” said my father. “It’s like you. But I’d better warn you what you’re up against. The boy’s basically fine, plenty of common sense, good bone structure, but he hasn’t an ounce of learning capacity. Head’s solid concrete, more like a gorilla than a human.”
“Oh, come, doctor. He seems perfectly intelligent to me. The fact is,” said Coe, his eyes twinkling, “I’ve noticed that there are times when he appears to outwit us all.”
“After an hour’s Latin he had the impression that Julius Caesar was a handy man in a Louisville feed store. To give you a rough idea.”
“Let’s try him, if it suits you, and the Indian child, too. It would give me pleasure.”
I was so blue, I’d have jumped in Salt Lake—if there’d been any chance to sink. I talked it over with Po-Povi, and right there I found what she was really like. I’d had the feeling all along there was something treacherous about this Indian; now I knew it.
“Yes,” she said. “I wish to. I speak in the white man’s tongue as a bird flies with a broken wing.”
“You want to go to school? On purpose? If I had time,” I said, “I’d tell you what they tried to do to me back in Louisville.”
But it didn’t do any good. We had the first lesson that afternoon, and I hate to admit it, but it was fun. This Coe was a born teacher. With him, it wasn’t a duty; he enjoyed what he was telling. He read about a man named Robinson Crusoe, who got lodged on a ripping good island, then spent all his time trying to get off, like a lunatic, and then he told us about the green English countryside, and a big house named Blandford Hall, and finally he read us a poem called St. Agnes Eve. It was beautiful. I never realized about that sort of thing before. In Louisville they missed the whole point of these poems. They picked them to pieces. Count the similes, rake out the metaphors, how many feet in a line? It hadn’t anything to do with literature; it was more like carving up a pig.
“That’s all for today, Jaimie, my lad. You got on splendidly.”
I felt embarrassed; I didn’t know what to say. Finall
y I blurted out, “It wasn’t as bad as I thought—nowhere near.”
“Same time tomorrow. Cheerio for now.”
He kept Po-Povi after school, so to speak, because he said he would teach her to read. Her face was shining when I closed the door. I’d never seen her so happy. A man old enough to be her father.
A month or so ran by. Winter came early to the valley of the Great Salt Lake that year. In November we had our first snowfall, a dry, white powdery dust driven by a chill north wind. Our adobe house was warm and snug, we were saving up our money; the mules and Spot had been hired out to a farmer; and the wagons stashed in a safe place. Our impatience to wait for spring was almost forgotten. In fact, we would have been content except for Mrs. Kissel. She couldn’t seem to get her strength back. But it was practically by force that my father managed to keep her in bed.
On November fifteenth we had a short note from Bridger, delivered by an Indian boy who stole a silver candlestick before he left: “Hoping this finds your party well and harmonious with the Saints. You will never meet an abler or friendlier people, but they’re notiony. It would not do to cross them. I am making a winter trip to Salt Lake City, exact time undecided. Trading here good, especially in gray wolf pelts. I have twenty-five hanging outside the house. It may be you heard about our cloudburst of October. No serious damage, but the island washed thirty yards down the river. Both wives seasick during the trip.”
Then this curious addition: “By now, you may be visited for proselyting purposes. Be firm but courteous. If possible, strike an attitude of permanent indecision. If things develop that you need advice, send word by Brother Hugh Marlowe. Brother Hugh Marlowe. Don’t fail to do it fast. When read, destroy this note.”
And a final P.S.: “Messenger bringing this is a brother of my younger wife. He has established some local reputation as a pickpocket and sneak. Generally thought to have a bright future. He should go far, unless plugged. Undersigned will replace what he steals. Kindly prepare inventory. J.B.”
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) Page 34