LIFE IN NEW YORK:—CONDUCTING A MORMON PAPER.  
Very cold, and dark, and dreary, were the first days which we spent in the New World. That faith which once had led me to hope, and believe, and “endure all things,” was now powerless to nerve me to any new course of action for my religion’s sake; for the dark shadow of Polygamy had come across my way; hope had fled, and my love, with the love of many other faithful Saints, had waxed cold.
To my husband and children I was, of course, devotedly attached, and was willing to combat any difficulty or endure any trial with them, or for their sake; and it was not long before my constancy was put to the test.
The Mormon emigrants have always a Captain and two “Counsellors” to every company. The Captain on board the “Emerald Isle,”—the vessel in which we came—was a returning Utah Elder;—one of his Counsellors was also a returning Elder, and my husband was the other. As soon as the Mormon Captain had come on shore, and had reported to the Apostle in charge of the New York Saints, he left to visit his friends. The Utah Counsellor had a young lady in the company to whom he had become very much attached, and who afterwards became one of his wives. I was not, therefore, surprised that, as soon as he could get his baggage, he also should disappear; but my husband—the other Counsellor—being encumbered with a wife and family, was obliged to remain, and the whole charge of seeing to the company devolved upon him.
We had, therefore, to remain in Castle Gardens until the whole company of emigrants was provided for; and during all the next week I, with my four children, remained in that public place, sick and weary, and as destitute of bedding and covering as we had been on board ship. The weather was intensely cold, and, unaccustomed as we were to the severity[104] of an American winter, we suffered not a little. The other unfortunate victims to faith were in the same condition, with the exception that they had something to sleep on at nights, while I had nothing but the bare boards for my bed since we left Liverpool;—all that I could gather together had been reserved for my babes. How we lived through that journey I know not, but I am certain that, could I have foreseen what we should have to endure, I would never have left England, whatever my refusal might have cost me.
I could not refrain from contrasting my life before and since I knew Mormonism. Before, I scarcely knew what suffering was, so little had I been called upon to endure. I never knew what it was to be without money, or to want for anything; but now I was in a strange land, in the depth of winter, without a home, without a pillow to rest my weary head upon, and with a future before me so dark that not a single ray of light gave to it the promise of hope. Could any slavery be more complete than mine? My fanaticism and zeal were all gone—I had nothing to sustain me. Certainly, I was still held by the fear that Mormonism, after all, might be of God, and that all this suffering might be necessary for my salvation—but if at that time I had only had a friend whose mind was clear from all the nonsense of Mormonism, and who had felt sufficient interest in me to advise me for my good, I think even then I might have freed myself from the mental slavery in which I was bound. But I had no intercourse with any but Mormons; and, indeed, a wish to form Gentile friendships I should then have considered a sin.
A week after our arrival, my husband found time to seek for apartments for his family, and I was thankful to leave our miserable quarters at Castle Gardens.
The Mormon authorities had, meanwhile, given instructions to the other emigrants how to act, and they did little more than this. Those who had not found work or places to go to were ordered to leave the gardens, and received permission to occupy an old dilapidated school-room in Williamsburgh, which had been used for preaching. I went there almost daily to see them, and therefore state what I saw as an eye-witness, and neither exaggerate nor misrepresent. There they huddled together, about one hundred and fifty—men, women and children. Most of the men had been respectable mechanics in their own country; many of them I had known personally and had visited in their cosy English homes; and their wives and families had been decently brought up. What[105] they must have suffered under this change of circumstances I leave the reader to guess.
In that miserable place they lived day and night—the poor, dispirited mothers (many of them very sick) having to cook, and wash, and perform all the necessary domestic duties, round two small sheet-iron stoves. It was not long before the place became like a pest-house from so many being confined in so small a place, and breathing the same fetid and pestilential atmosphere; and many of the young children died of an epidemic which was raging among them.
They had saved some of the ship’s provisions, and that was all they had to eat, and it did not last long. To me it was most distressing to witness so much misery without being able to render any assistance, particularly to see the poor little children shivering and crying with hunger and cold, while many of their mothers were in such a miserable state of apathy that they paid little or no attention to them. I often tried to awaken in them feelings of human sympathy, but I was met with a murmur of discontent. The people, men and women alike—seemed to be utterly demoralized. Nor can this be a matter of wonder; for in England the men had been told that—while at home they could only earn four or five shillings a day, and would never be able to put by enough to carry them all the way to Utah—in New York they would be able to earn two-and-a-half to three, and even four dollars a day—equal to from ten to sixteen shillings English—and that employers would even come on board ship anxious to engage them. Thus they had by false statements been allured from their homes and plunged into the most abject poverty. Day by day they went out seeking work, but finding none; willing to do anything to provide bread for their families, but returning nightly, unsuccessful, to their starving wives and children.
My own resources were gone. I could do nothing. When we left Castle Gardens I think we only had about five dollars left, while the heavy snow which covered the ground and the intense cold promised many weeks of unusual severity. Needing so greatly pity myself, how I sympathized with those poor sufferers, how I pitied them!
In the midst of all this, the Apostle John Taylor learned that some of these poor souls had been seen begging. So he came from his comfortable boarding-house in Brooklyn, well wrapped up in a handsome overcoat, and scolded these poor, starving creatures, and harangued them concerning the meanness[106] of begging. With great swelling words he spoke of the dignity of the Saints of the Most High, and told them that he despised a Mormon who could fall to the level of a common street beggar.
Could he have heard the unspoken curses of the poor, wounded hearts of those who listened to him, as they thought of his brother “Apostle” in England, and of how he had deceived them and sent them into a strange country, in the depth of winter, to beg, to starve, or to steal, he would have learned that though the victim of a delusive faith may mentally submit to man-made creeds and priesthoods, in his heart he will judge, not so much the words he hears as the man who utters them.
The wisdom of the Apostle found out a remedy. He “counselled” the men and boys to buy shovels, and go forth into the streets and clean away the snow from the fronts of the doors and from the side-walks, and told them that they would thus get plenty of money to keep them until winter was over. One elderly brother, who had a little money left, bought a stock of shovels; but the emigrants found that there were plenty of others who were as eager as they for work, and who were much better acquainted with the way of obtaining it. The shovel experiment was a failure, and the poor old brother lost his money in the investment.
For whatever the Apostle Taylor may have contributed to these unfortunate persons—whether in “counsel,” money, or provisions—he will doubtless have his reward; and, for aught I know, he may have been unable to give anything more than counsel; but, at the same time, my opinion of the value of counsel remains unchanged. There has been no lack of “counsel” or counsellors in the Mormon Church. “Counsel” has been given in abundance to all, and by no means always for the benefit of those who received it. It was not, however, because he failed to assist them practically that the people hated the Apostle Taylor, and have hated him ever since; but it was for his pride and arrogance, and the way in which he dared to talk to free-born Englishmen and Englishwomen about the dignity of the Priesthood, and the contempt in which he held them in the hour of their humiliation and distress—for that they hated him.
I do not, of course, wish to justify the people in begging; such conduct ............