Abroad At Home Part 39

I looked at the window, and as I did so, the curtains parted and the face of a negress was pressed against the pane, grinning at me with a knowing, sickening grin.

I pa.s.sed on. From another window a white woman with very black hair and eyes, and cheeks of a light orchid-shade, showed her gold teeth in a mirthless automatic smile, and added the allurement of an ice-cold wink.

The door of the crib at the corner stood open, and just before I reached it a woman stepped out and surveyed me as I approached. She wore a white linen skirt and a middy blouse, attire grotesquely juvenile for one of her years. Her hair, of which she had but a moderate amount, was light brown and stringy, and she wore gold-rimmed spectacles. She did not look depraved but, upon the contrary resembled a highly respectable, if homely, German cook I once employed. As I pa.s.sed her window I saw hanging there a gla.s.s sign, across which, in gold letters, was the t.i.tle, "Madam Leo."

"Madam Leo," she said to me, nodding and pointing at her chest. "That's me. Leo, the lion, eh?" She laughed foolishly.

I paused and made some casual inquiry concerning her prosperity.

"Things is dull now in Cripple Creek," she said. "There ain't much business any more. I wish they'd start a white man's club or a dance hall across the street. Then Cripple Creek would be booming."

I think I remarked, in reply, that things did look rather dull. In the meantime I glanced in at her little room. There was a chair or two, a cheap oak dresser, and an iron bed. The room looked neat.

"Ain't I got a nice clean place?" suggested Madam Leo. Then as I a.s.sented, she pointed to a calendar which hung upon the wall. At the top of it was a colored print from some French painting, showing a Cupid kissing a filmily draped Psyche.

"That's me," said Madam Leo. "That's me when I was a young girl!" Again she loosed her laugh.

I started to move on.

"Where are you from?" she asked.

"I came up from Colorado Springs," I said.

"Well," she returned, "when you go back send some nice boys up here.

Tell them to see Madam Leo. Tell them a middle-aged woman with spectacles. I'm known here. I been here four years. Oh, things ain't so bad. I manage to make two or three dollars a day."

As I pa.s.sed to leeward of her on the narrow walk I got the smell of a strong, brutal perfume.

"Have you got to be going?" she asked.

"Yes," I answered. "I must go to the train."

"Well, then--so long," she said.

"So long."

"Don't forget Madam Leo," she admonished, giving utterance, again, to her strident, feeble-minded laugh.

"I won't," I promised.

And I never, never shall.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV

THE MORMON CAPITAL

I think it was in Kansas City that I first became conscious of the fact that, without my knowing it, my mind had made, in advance, imaginary pictures of certain sections of the country, and that, in almost every instance, these pictures were remarkable for their untruthfulness.

Kansas City itself surprised me with its hills, for I had been thinking of it in connection with the prairies. With Denver it was the other way about. Thinking of Denver as a mountain city, instead of a city near the mountains, I expected hills, but did not find them. And when I crossed the Rockies, they too afforded a surprise, not because of their height, but because of their width. Evidently I must have had some vague idea that a train, traveling west from Denver, would climb very definitely up the Rocky Mountains, cross the Great Divide, and proceed very definitely down again, upon the other side, whither a sort of long, sloping plain would lead to California. Denver itself I thought of as being placed further west upon the continent than is, in reality, the case. I did not realize at all that the city is, in fact, only a few hundred miles west of the halfway point on an imaginary line drawn from coast to coast; nor was I aware that, instead of being for the most part sloping plain, the thousand miles that intervenes between Denver and the Pacific Ocean, is made up of series after series of mountain ranges and valleys, their successive crests and hollows following one another like the waves of the sea.

In short, I had imagined that the Rockies were the whole show. I had not the faintest recollection of the Cordilleran System (of which the Rockies and all these other ranges are but a part), while as for the Sierra Nevadas, I remembered them only when I came to them and then much as one will recall a slight acquaintance who has been in jail for many years.

Are you shocked by my ignorance--or my confession of it? Then let me ask you if you know that the Uintah Mountain Range, in Utah, is the only range in the entire country which runs east and west? And have you ever heard of the Pequop Mountains, or the Cedar Mountains, or the Santa Roasas, or the Egans, or the Humboldts, or the Washoes, or the Gosiutes, or the Toyales, or the Toquimas, or the Hot Creek Mountains? And did you know that in California as well as in New Hamps.h.i.+re there are the White Mountains? And what do you know of the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Ranges?

Not wis.h.i.+ng to keep the cla.s.s in geography after school, I shall not tell you about all these mountains, but will satisfy myself with the statement that, in an amphitheater formed between the two last mentioned ranges, at the head of a broad, irrigated valley, is situated Salt Lake City.

The very name of Salt Lake City had a flat sound in my ears; and in that mental alb.u.m of imaginary photographs of cities, to which I have referred, I saw the Mormon capital as on a sandy plain, with the Great Salt Lake on one side and the Great Salt Desert on the other. Therefore, upon arriving, I was surprised again, for the lake is not visible at all, being a dozen miles distant, and the desert is removed still farther, while instead of sandy plains the mountains rise abruptly on three sides of the city, and on the fourth is the sweet valley, covered with rich farms and orchards, and dotted here and there with minor Mormon settlements.

Like Mark Twain, who visited Salt Lake many years ago, before the railroad went there, I managed to forget the lake entirely after I had been there for a little while. I made no excursion to Saltair Beach, the playground of the neighborhood, and only saw the lake when our train crossed a portion of it after leaving the city.

I do not know that the great pavilion at Saltair Beach, of which every one has seen pictures, is a Mormon property, but it well may be, for the Mormons have never been a narrow-minded sect with regard to decent gaieties. They approve of dancing, and the ragtime craze has reached them, for, as I was walking past the Lion House, one evening, I heard the music and saw a lot of young people "trotting" gaily, in the place where formerly resided most of the twenty odd known wives of the late Brigham Young. Later a Mormon told me that dances are held in Mormon meeting-houses and that they are always opened with prayer.

Also in the cafe of the Hotel Utah there was dancing every night, and when the members of the "Honeymoon Express" Company put in an appearance there one night, we might have been on Broadway. The hotel, I was informed, is owned by Mormons; it is an excellent establishment. They do not stare at you as though they thought you an eccentric if you ask for tea at five o'clock, but bring it to you in the most approved fas.h.i.+on, with a kettle and a lamp, and the neatest silver tea service I have ever seen in an American hotel. But that is by the way, for I was speaking of the frivolities of Mormondom, and afternoon tea is, with me at least, a serious matter.

Salt Lake City was, until a few years ago, a "wide open town." The "stockade" was famous among the red-light inst.i.tutions of the country.

But that is gone, having been washed away by our national "wave of reform," and the town has now a rather orderly appearance, although it is not without its night cafes, one of them being the inevitable "Maxim's," without which, it would appear, no American city is now complete.

One of the first things the Mormons did, on establis.h.i.+ng their city, was to build an amus.e.m.e.nt hall, and as long as fifty years ago, this was superseded by the Salt Lake Theatre, a picturesque old playhouse which is still standing, and which looks, inside and out, like an old wartime wood-cut of Ford's Theatre in Was.h.i.+ngton. Even before the railroads came the best actors and actresses in the country played in this theater, drawn there by the strong financial inducements which the Mormons offered, and it is interesting to note that many stage favorites of to-day made their first appearances in this playhouse. If I am not mistaken, Edwin Milton Royle made his debut as an actor there, and both Maude Adams and Ada Dwyer were born in Salt Lake City, and appeared upon the stage for the first time at the Salt Lake Theatre. Yes, it is an interesting and historic playhouse, and I hope that when it burns up, as I have no doubt it ultimately will, no audience will be present, for I think that it will go like tinder. And although I still bemoan the money which I spent to see there, a maudlin entertainment called "The Honeymoon Express," direct from that home of ba.n.a.l vulgarities, the New York Winter Garden, I cannot quite bring myself to hope that when the Salt Lake Theatre burns, the man who wrote "The Honeymoon Express," the manager who produced it, and the company which played it, will be rehearsing there. For all their sins, I should not like to see them burned, though as to being roasted--well, that is a different thing.

Whatever may be one's opinion of the matrimonial industry of Brigham Young, the visitor to Salt Lake City will not dispute that the late leader of the Mormons knew, far better than most men of his day, how a town should be laid out. The blocks of Salt Lake City are rectangular; the lots are large, the streets wide and admirably paved with asphalt, almost all the houses are low, and stand in their own green grounds, and perhaps the most characteristic note of all is given by the poplars and box elders which grow everywhere, not only in the city, but throughout the valley.

Besides my preconceptions as to the city, I arrived in Salt Lake City with certain preconceptions as to Mormons. I expected them to be radically different, somehow, from all other people I had met. I antic.i.p.ated finding them deceitful and evasive: furtive people, wandering in devious ways and disappearing into mysterious houses, at dead of night. I wanted to see them, I wanted to talk with them, but I wondered, nervously, whether one might speak to them about themselves and their religion, and more especially, whether one might use the words "Mormon" and "polygamy" without giving offense.

It was not without misgivings, therefore, that my companion and I went to keep an appointment with Joseph F. Smith, head of the Mormon Church--or, to give it its official t.i.tle, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. We found the President, with several high officials of the church, in his office at the Lion House--the large adobe building in which, as I have said, formerly resided the rank and file of Brigham Young's wives; although Amelia lived by herself, in the so called "Amelia Palace," across the street.

Mr. Smith is a tall, dignified man who comes far from looking his full seventy-six years. The nose upon which he wears his gold rimmed spectacles is the dominant feature of his face, being one of those great, strong, mountainous, indomitable noses. His eyes are dark, large and keen, and he wears a flowing gray beard and dresses in a black frock-coat. He and the men around him looked like a group of strong, prosperous, dogmatically religious New Englanders, such as one might find at a directors' meeting in the back room of some very solid old bank in Maine or Ma.s.sachusetts. Clearly they were executives and men of wealth. As for religion, had I not known that they were Mormons, I should have judged them to be either Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians.

The occasion did not prove to be a gay one. I tried to explain to the Mormons that I was writing impressions of my travels and that I had desired to meet them because, in Salt Lake City, the Mormons seemed to supply the greatest interest.

But even after I had explained my mission, a frigid air prevailed, and I felt that here, at least, I would get but scant material. Their att.i.tude perplexed me. I could not believe they were embarra.s.sed, although I knew that I was.

Then presently the mystery was cleared up, for President Smith launched out upon a statement of his opinion regarding "Collier's Weekly"--the paper in which many of these chapters first appeared--and I became suddenly and painfully aware that I was being mistaken for a muckraker.

The President's opinion of "Collier's" was more frank than flattering, and though one or two of the other Mormons, who seemed to understand our aims, tried to smooth matters over in the interests of harmony, he would not be mollified, but insisted vigorously that "Collier's" had printed outrageous lies about him. This was all news to me, for, as it happened, I had not read the articles to which he referred, and for which, as a representative of "Collier's," I was now, apparently, being held responsible. I explained that to the President of the Church, whereupon he simmered down somewhat, but I think he still regarded my companion and me with suspicion, and was glad to see us go.

Thus did we suffer for the sins of Sarah Comstock.

It may not seem necessary to add that the subject of polygamy was not mentioned in that conversation.

In thinking over our encounter with these leading Mormons I could not feel surprised, for all that I have read about this sect has been in the nature of attacks. Mark Twain tells about what was called a "Destroying Angel" of the Mormon Church, stating that, "as I understand it, they are Latter Day Saints who are set apart by the Church to conduct permanent disappearances of obnoxious citizens." He characterizes the one he met as "a loud, profane, offensive old blackguard." But Mormon Destroying Angels are things of the past, as, I believe, are Mormon visions of Empire, and Mormon aggressions of all kinds. Another book, Harry Leon Wilson's novel, "The Lions of the Lord," was not calculated to soothe the Mormon sensibilities, and of the numerous articles in magazines and newspapers which I have read--most of them with regard to polygamy--I recall none that has not dealt with them severely.

Now, remembering that whatever we may believe, the Mormons believe devoutly in their religion, what must be their point of view about all this? Their story is not different from any other in that it has two sides. If they did commit aggressions in the early days, which seems to have been the case, they were also the victims of persecution from the very start, and it is difficult to determine, at this late day, whether they, or those who made their lives in the East unbearable, were most at fault.

According to Mormon history the church had its very beginnings in religious dissension. It is recounted by the Mormons that Joseph Smith, Jr., founder of the church (he was the uncle of the present President), attended revival meetings in Manchester, Vermont, and was so confused by the differences of opinion and the ill-feeling between different sects that he prayed to the Lord to tell him which was the true religion. In regard to this, Smith wrote that after his prayer, "a mysterious power of darkness overcame me. I could not speak and I felt myself in the grasp of an unseen personage of darkness. My soul went up in an unuttered prayer for deliverance, and as I was about despairing, the gloom rolled away and I saw a pillar of light descending from heaven, approaching me."

Smith then tells of a vision of a Glorious Being, who informed him that none of the warring religious sects had the right version. Then: "The light vanished, the personages withdrew and recovering myself, I found myself lying on my back gazing up into heaven."