Page:Critical Woodcuts (1926).pdf/334

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debted for their conception of Mormon leaders and Mormon civilization? To Congressmen viewing with subconscious envy the efficiency of the theocratic "machine" in Utah and the Oriental prerogatives of the Mormon "boss." To lone, lorn hysterical women, without even a thirtieth share in a husband, seeking to free the Mormon wives from "bondage." To clergymen diverting their minds from domestic troubles by proposing a foreign war—like the Rev. De Witt Talmage, who, as Mr. Werner reminds us, paused in interpreting the Gospel of Christ one Sunday morning in 1877 to suggest to the national government that the time was ripe, now that Brigham Young had died, to send Phil Sheridan to Utah and to confiscate as much of the rich Mormon lands as would pay for their subjugation. To comic journalists like Artemus Ward and Mark Twain, who in quest of copy and a national guffaw, interviewed the Governor of Utah, and led off with such questions as this: "'You air a married man, Mister Yung, I bleeve?' sez I."

We are officially under obligation to think of a man with a non-monogamous mind as a monster. But deep in the sinful heart of man lurks a kind of atavistic sympathy and curiosity regarding the private life of Brigham Young: he had a human experience so rich and so varied. He had the wisdom possible only to one who has the comparative point of view. While this subject is before us it should be said that Mr. Werner goes into it as carefully as one can desire in three really instructive chapters on "Puritan Polygamy," "Brigham Young and His Wives" and "Polygamy and the Law."

In the palmy days of plurality Heber Kimball, eminent saint, declared in the pulpit: "For a man of God