I must not forget to say that my brave and kind-hearted friend Ryder of the mail coach, who had so often alluded to "Ward" in our ride from Virginia to Austin, was among my hearers at Big Creek. He had discovered who I was, and informed me that he had debated whether to wollop me or give me some rich silver claims.
How was I to be greeted by the Mormons? That was rather an exciting question with me. I had been told on the plains that a certain humorous sketch of mine (written some years before) had greatly incensed the Saints, and a copy of the Sacramento "Union" newspaper had a few days before fallen into my hands in which a Salt Lake correspondent quite clearly intimated that my reception at the new Zion might be unpleasantly warm. I ate my dinner moodily and sent out for some cigars. The venerable clerk brought me six. They cost only two dollars. They were procured at a store near by. The Salt Lake House sells neither cigars nor liquors.
I smoke in my room, having no heart to mingle with the people in the office.
Dr. Hingston "thanks God he never wrote against the Mormons," and goes out in search of a brother nglishman. Comes back at night and says there is a prejudice against me. Advises me to keep in. Has heard that the Mormons thirst for my blood and are on the lookout for me.
The next day is Sunday, and we go to the Tabernacle, in the morning. The Tabernacle is located on ---- street, and is a long rakish building of adobe, capable of seating some twenty-five hundred persons. There is a wide platform and a rather large pulpit at one end of the building, and at the other end is another platform for the choir. A young Irishman of the name of Sloan preaches a sensible sort of discourse, to which a Presbyterian could hardly have objected. Last night this same Mr. Sloan enacted a character in a rollicking Irish farce at the theatre! And he played it well, I was told; not so well, of course, as the great Dan Bryant could; but I fancy he was more at home in the Mormon pulpit than Daniel would have been.
The Mormons, by the way, are preeminently an amusement-loving people, and the Elders pray for the success of their theatre with as much earnestness as they pray for anything else. The congregation doesn't startle us. It is known, I fancy, that the heads of the Church are to be absent to-day, and the attendance is slim. There are no ravishingly beautiful women present, and no positively ugly ones. The men are fair to middling. They will never be slain in cold blood for their beauty, nor shut up in jail for their homeliness.