The Land of Sunshine Volume 11 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1899 edition. Excerpt: ...most faithful temple workers in the city is a white haired woman--the mother of Mrs. Ann Eliza Young. Her aged father, on the contrary, will have nothing to do with the church. One can stroll through streets shaded by stately Lombardy poplars, and gaze at long, low-roofed houses with tiny windows and from three to six front doors, and know that in the small, dark rooms there were once as many wives as doors, the husband spending a week with each in turn. In whose keeping he left his best pipe and Sunday clothes neither history nor the gossip of the day has told us; they may have been left with the one who cooked the best dinners. That these weekly visits to each family were then, as they are now in numerous instances, an occasion for the killing of the fatted calf, cannot be doubted. Of all this the tourist hears vague rumors but sees nothing. The mixed relationships, the felicities and infelicities, the tragedy and pathos as well as the irresistibly comic side of Mormon domestic life are not apparent to one who merely passes by. One who has the patience to stand at the gates of Temple Block for half an hour any Sunday afternoon will see the extremes of refined fanaticism, and the unthinking Norwegian animal--the bent backs and dull eyes of those who have struggled through many weary years for a bare existence, and narrow-browed, repulsive children. Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, can be seen so strange a crowd; no one would ever mistake them for the members of any other church, orthodox or liberal. Their incapacity for reason--plainly stamped on their faces--is such that they see no difficulty in accepting as facts doctrines at which all the rest of the civilized world wonders. They believe in the efficacy of baptism for the dead, ..