We Discussed
Whatsoever Of Mormon Doctrines Came To Mind With American Freedom,
Which He Defended As Best He Could, Speaking In An Excited But
Deprecating Tone.
When hard pressed he would say:
"I don't understand
these deep things, but the elders do. I'm only an umble tradesman."
In taking leave he 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 peculiarity 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 peculiar doctrines" and "peculiar 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 delightful
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, the Mormon
children, "Utah's best crop," seem remarkably bright and promising.
From children one passes naturally into the blooming wilderness, to
the pure religion of sunshine and snow, where all the good and the
evil of this strange people lifts and vanishes from the mind like mist
from the mountains.
VII
A Great Storm in Utah[9]
Utah has just been blessed with one of the grandest storms I have ever
beheld this side of the Sierra. The mountains are laden with fresh
snow; wild streams are swelling and booming adown the canyons, and out
in the valley of the Jordan a thousand rain-pools are gleaming in the
sun.
With reference to the development of fertile storms bearing snow and
rain, the greater portion of the calendar springtime of Utah has been
winter. In all the upper canyons of the mountains the snow is now
from five to ten feet deep or more, and most of it has fallen since
March. Almost every other day during the last three weeks small local
storms have been falling on the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Mountains, while
the Jordan Valley remained dry and sun-filled. But on the afternoon
of Thursday, the 17th ultimo, wind, rain, and snow filled the whole
basin, driving wildly over valley and plain from range to range,
bestowing their benefactions in most cordial and harmonious storm-measures. The oldest Saints say they have never witnessed a more
violent storm of this kind since the first settlement of Zion, and
while the gale from the northwest, with which the storm began, was
rocking their adobe walls, uprooting trees and darkening the streets
with billows of dust and sand, some of them seemed inclined to guess
that the terrible phenomenon was one of the signs of the times of
which their preachers are so constantly reminding them, the beginning
of the outpouring of the treasured wrath of the Lord upon the Gentiles
for the killing of Joseph Smith. To me it seemed a cordial outpouring
of Nature's love; but it is easy to differ with salt Latter-Days in
everything - storms, wives, politics, and religion.
About an hour before the storm reached the city I was so fortunate as
to be out with a friend on the banks of the Jordan enjoying the
scenery. Clouds, with peculiarly restless and self-conscious
gestures, were marshaling themselves along the mountain-tops, and
sending out long, overlapping wings across the valley; and even where
no cloud was visible, an obscuring film absorbed the sunlight, giving
rise to a cold, bluish darkness. Nevertheless, distant objects along
the boundaries of the landscape were revealed with wonderful
distinctness in this weird, subdued, cloud-sifted light. The
mountains, in particular, with the forests on their flanks, their mazy
lacelike canyons, the wombs of the ancient glaciers, and their
marvelous profusion of ornate sculpture, were most impressively
manifest. One would fancy that a man might be clearly seen walking on
the snow at a distance of twenty or thirty miles.
While we were reveling in this rare, ungarish grandeur, turning from
range to range, studying the darkening sky and listening to the still
small voices of the flowers at our feet, some of the denser clouds
came down, crowning and wreathing the highest peaks and dropping long
gray fringes whose smooth linear structure showed that snow was
beginning to fall. Of these partial storms there were soon ten or
twelve, arranged in two rows, while the main Jordan Valley between
them lay as yet in profound calm. At 4:30 p.m. a dark brownish cloud
appeared close down on the plain towards the lake, extending from the
northern extremity of the Oquirrh Range in a northeasterly direction
as far as the eye could reach. Its peculiar color and structure
excited our attention without enabling us to decide certainly as to
its character, but we were not left long in doubt, for in a few
minutes it came sweeping over the valley in a wild uproar, a torrent
of wind thick with sand and dust, advancing with a most majestic
front, rolling and overcombing like a gigantic sea-wave. Scarcely was
it in plain sight ere it was upon us, racing across the Jordan, over
the city, and up the slopes of the Wahsatch, eclipsing all the
landscapes in its course - the bending trees, the dust streamers, and
the wild onrush of everything movable giving it an appreciable
visibility that rendered it grand and inspiring.
This gale portion of the storm lasted over an hour, then down came the
blessed rain and the snow all through the night and the next day, the
snow and rain alternating and blending in the valley.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 25 of 81
Words from 24621 to 25655
of 82482