Poor thing! her expressions of gratitude really overcame me."

"( Then you did not know her ?"

"Because I half suspect that she is a girl in whom I am deeply interested."

A blank look of amazement settled on the countenance of the worthy dame.

“Oh, I hope not, indeed, I really hope not," she replied.

"Can you tell me where she lives ?"

"I cannot," she answered, gravely. "But why should you wish to know ?”

I had sunk immeasurably in her opinion, and deemed it necessary to exculpate myself from the rumor the unworthy suspicion aroused in her mind. So, without further parley, I related all that I knew about Miss Scott, with her father's deep anxiety, and the interest which, for his sake, I had taken in her fate.

Mrs. Farrow listened attentively, and when I had finished, expressed her conviction that Miss Scott and the person with whom she so deeply sympathized were identical. She would make further inquiries, she said, and if the supposition proved correct, we would take measures for restoring her to her father.

I was not kept long in suspense. The next day she

returned with the work, and Mrs. Farrow at once introduced the subject, by inquiring if her name was Scott.

She replied, with some little hesitation, that it was.

"And you came hither in an emigrant train for California ?" continued the matron.

Her auditor assented.

"And would you be willing to return to your father should an opportunity present?"

"But would it be possible for my father to forgive and receive me?” she said, bursting into a passion of tears.

Mrs. Farrow assured her that there could be no doubt of it, and concluded by recommending her departure in the first emigrant train, declaring that she would supply the funds for all necessary expenses. Miss Scott expressed her readiness to go, and gave a general ontline history of her trials in Mormondom.

She had never ceased to regret the first false step in her life; her carelessness and neglect of parental teaching and advice. Disobedience, she said, led her to form an acquaintance, and ultimately a more intimate connection with the young lieutenant. Disobedience led her to fly with him from her best and truest friend, and then, as the meed of her folly, she had met shame, desertion, and disgrace. Before she had lived a month with Fitzgerald, her seducer, he became weary of her, left her for days, and even weeks, without fuel or food, at which times she would be obliged to go out and beg a scanty supply from her neighbors. These generally were most ungracious, and never failed to express

their abhorrence of her degraded condition; for, strange as it may appear, the sixth wife of a Mormon holds in supreme contempt the unfortunate female who may become a mother without the sacred name of wife, or one whose connection with a lover has not been sanctioned by the marriage tie.

She could have borne all this, she said, as a merited punishment, but the Mormon libertines taking advantage of her unprotected condition, began to insult her with disgusting proposals, of which even Fitzgerald urged her acceptance. This aroused her temper. She reproached him with her betrayal and ruin; he retorted. Words changed to blows. He struck her with the flat side of his sword, and left the house. She never saw him afterwards.

Dependent on her own exertions, without relatives or friends, she drank deeply the cup of bitterness and humiliation. Her first efforts were at nursing, but she soon became disgusted. There was plenty of employment, but little pay. Then she was cheated by one, swindled by another, while a third would accuse her of laziness, and refuse her remuneration on the plea that she earned nothing. What was almost equally as bad, many families were so crowded in small inconvenient rooms, that the recovery of the patient was almost impossible, when the blame, instead of resting where it ought, would be thrown on the nurse. In one family there were three wives, eight children, and one old grandmother, with the husband and grandfather, besides a table, chairs, one bed, two benches, a cupboard, and cook-stove, all in one small apartment, eighteen by sixteen. The bed contained

the sick woman, whose recovery, for a long time, was doubtful, though the only wonder was, how, amid so much noise and heat, pestiferous vapor, and suffocating smells, she could have ever recovered at all.

But Miss Scott had other difficulties. The husbands in whose families she found employment, almost invariably solicited her to become a member of their seraglios, and sometimes she found it extremely difficult to escape their importunities. For this she had been persecuted in various ways, and it was extremely difficult for her to supply herself with bread.

The next day I sought the commander of an emigrant train, about to depart for California, and gained permission for her to accompany it. Frederick B also departed with them.

ELIZA SNOW MARRIES BROTHER BRIGHAM. 243

CHAPTER XIV.

CONVERSATIONS WITH AN ELDER ON POLYGAMY, AND THE FUTURE

OF THE MORMONS-THEIR NATIONAL AND SOCIAL POLICY,. ETC.

HOUGH a rigid Mormon, Mrs. Farrow was too much

THOUGH

of a woman not to delight in speaking her mind, and her natural ideas of right and wrong were much too clear and perspicuous to be readily confused by the chaos of Mormon opinions and practices. Then, too, as not a particle of deceit harbored in her heart, she could not bear to see it in others.

"It's just as I thought," she said, one day at breakfast, "Eliza Snow has become the wife of Brother Brigham."

"I thought the governor favored her marriage with another man."

"Well, I suppose he did at first, but she was averse to marrying him, and declared her determination to take a Gentile husband."

"And to prevent this he concluded to marry her himself?"

"I suppose so."