HOW MARRIAGES ARE MADE IN UTAH—A NEW WIFE FOUND FOR MY HUSBAND.  
Not long after this, I was enabled to visit my Swiss friend, Madame Bailiff. Ever since her husband had called upon me in Salt Lake City, I had watched anxiously for an opportunity of seeing her, for I felt much interested in learning how time had passed with her since we parted in Geneva.
I found her in a little log-cabin of two rooms, with bare walls, bare floor, and miserably furnished; and in this wretched abode poverty and polygamy had wrecked the life of my poor friend, whom I had known under such different circumstances. Here, together with their five children, lived also the second wife, with her two children. It was with difficulty that I could recognize in the poor, careworn, broken-spirited, and ill-clad woman who stood before me, the once gay, light-hearted, happy, and elegantly-dressed lady whom I had known in Switzerland. Mormonism had in her case utterly blighted her existence. It seemed to me hardly possible that so great a change should have been wrought in her in such a few years as had elapsed since last I saw her. What suffering she must have endured, I thought, what mental agony, what physical pain, to write those wrinkled lines of care upon her once handsome face; and, ah! what a pang I felt at the remembrance that I myself had been instrumental in leading her into Mormonism and Polygamy. Self-reproach I did not feel, but sorrow I did. I had thought to lead her into the way of holiness and heavenly peace by winning her to the religion of the Saints, but that which I in my enthusiasm had believed would be the greatest blessing which one poor mortal could communicate to another, had turned to a curse, and, instead of the happy wife and mother which she once had been, she had become a victim to that faith which in its very existence is an insult to womanhood.
In temper and disposition she was, however, just the same;[269] her affectionate nature was unchanged. No doubt she read in my features the painful surprise which I experienced in witnessing her altered circumstances; but she met me with not a single word of reproach for my being the cause of her leaving her own dear country. I should not have blamed her had she hated me, though she knew, of course, that I had wronged her innocently.
She told me of the difficulties which they had had to contend with after their arrival in Utah, and how they had been compelled to part with almost everything they had, in order to provide bread for their children. When they left London, they took with them several handsome carpets, china, glass, and a large quantity of silver ware, besides bedding and clothing of every description; for they were well-to-do in the world, and had quite enough for themselves, after they had liberally assisted the poorer Saints to emigrate. Upon their arrival in Utah, the husband—good man that he was—was willing to come down to the level of his brethren and go to farming among them. A brother who knew him in his own country, and imagined, I suppose, that he could afford to lose, sold him a farm that he himself had become disgusted with, though, of course, he did not say so; and when my inexperienced friend, Monsieur Bailiff, found that nothing could be done with it, he supposed that the land was good enough, but that he himself was not competent to work it. No one ventured to hint that he had been cheated, as it was one of the Church authorities who had sold him the land. After spending upon it all that he possessed, he was finally compelled to abandon it. They were now very much straitened in circumstances, and my poor friend told me that she had frequently been compelled—as they were entirely destitute of money—to take a silver spoon or fork to the butcher’s market to trade with, and there they drove a hard bargain with her, and she obtained next to nothing in exchange for her silver. Her crystal and plate now grace the table of a certain rich man in Utah. Every article they possessed went in this way at a most ruinous sacrifice, until nothing remained; and then the husband was forced to engage in manual labour, while the poor wife employed herself in whatever feminine work she could obtain; they receiving in return just what people chose to pay them. In the midst of their troubles the husband was “counselled” to take another wife.
“But why did he not refuse to do so?” I asked.
“If you had been here during the Reformation, you would[270] not ask me such a question as that. Sister Stenhouse, you ought to thank God that you were not here then. There were shocking things done at that time, and the men were all crazy about marrying. They married every woman who was single, and even little girls who had scarcely reached their teens; it was a time of terror, and no one dared to rebel.”
She then told me that her husband had been, as one might say, compelled to marry a young Swiss girl whom they had brought out to Utah with them as a domestic. This girl had been a very faithful servant, and Madame Bailiff had become very much attached to her. During the Reformation the Bishop visited them, and “counselled” Monsieur Bailiff to take a second wife. The girl was also “counselled” to marry, and when she said that she did not know of any one to whom she would like to be married, the Bishop told her that he himself would find a suitable man.
“My husband told me what the Bishop had urged him to do,” said Madame Bailiff, “and we talked the matter over in a practical way. We knew that the girl would be forced to marry somebody, and that then she would have to leave us, which would put us to the very greatest inconvenience, for, situated as we were, we could hardly get on without her assistance. At the same time, he also would be compelled to obey counsel, and we came to the conclusion that as there was no way of evading the difficulty altogether, it would be better for him to marry the girl than to bring a stranger into the house. So he asked her, and she accepted him, and they were married. She is a good girl, and tries to do her best, but it is a great trial to me, and one which I trust you may never be called upon to bear. My husband is as kind and gentle a man as ever lived, and he has done all he could to keep me from feeling unhappy; had it been otherwise, I dare not think what I should have done—I believe I should have gone mad or died. In our household arrangements, of course it made very little difference, but it was inexpressibly painful to me, and though I suppose I shall remain a Mormon till the day of my death, I have learned to hate Mormonism.”
Poor Madame Bailiff! Hers was a life of privation and sorrow of late years. Happy as woman could be in her youthful days, she little dreamed what Providence had in store for her ere her earthly course had run. With a faithful and devoted husband; with a charming little family growing up around her; with all that could make life fair and beautiful. But that accursed thing—Polygamy—came and[271] poisoned all her happiness, and blighted all her hopes; and when, but a few months ago, worn out and weary of life, she left behind her all her sorrows and all her misery, I could not weep that she had gone to a better land beyond the veil, but I thanked God that at last, poor soul, her days of trial were for ever over, and she had entered into her eternal rest.
One day Brother Brigham sent me word that he wished to see me.
I went to him, and he told me that he wanted me to become acquainted with a certain young girl in whom he took a great interest. She was the daughter, by his first wife, of Jedediah M. Grant, the famous Apostle of the “Reformation”—her name was Carrie, and she was now an orphan. Brother Brigham wished me to have her with me every day, for she was not “feeling well,” he said, and he thought I might do her some good. This “not feeling well” I afterwards discovered meant that she was almost ready to apostatize. If she desired it, I was to teach her my business; not that she needed to follow any profession, for, as President Young explained, she had a good home; but her mind needed occupation, and he did not care how she employed her time, so long as she was with me every day and could be made to “feel well.”
I listened to all that Brother Brigham said, and accepted the trust in good faith—not only to please him, but because the girl was an orphan, and my heart went out towards her even before I had seen her.
Before I returned home I called at the house where Carrie was stopping, and arranged that she should come every day to see me, under pretext of learning the business. Now it so happened that we each conceived a liking to the other the very first moment we met; we made friends together at once, and she wanted to begin coming to me the very next day. She was a sweet-looking and intelligent girl, fair, but fragile, and with a peculiar expression of melancholy sadness dwelling upon her features, which gave her a painfully interesting appearance. I never before, or since, met with a young girl who habitually looked so unhappy; and I thought that perhaps physical weakness might be the cause, for it was evident that in constitution she was extremely delicate—I almost feared consumptive.
The first day we spent together she told me that her parents had been among the pioneers to Utah, that her only sister had died on the Plains, and that she had lost her mother soon after they had arrived in Salt Lake City. As the only remaining[272] child of her mother, she had been a great pet with her father, but he too had died about four years previous to the time of which I speak, and she had never been happy since. “I often long to die,” she said, “that I might join my mother and father; no one loves me here, and I have nothing to live for.” Her father had married four wives after her mother’s death, and they were all very kind to her, but she did not feel that she had a home. She told me that about six months before she came to me she had started to go east, to her mother’s friends, for they had frequently written to her, urging her to come to them, and that when she was about two weeks’ journey from Salt Lake City, Brigham Young sent after her, and she was brought back. “But,” she said, “I shall never be happy here, Sister Stenhouse, I know I never shall; and why should they not let me leave and go to my relatives?”
I knew very well that it was of no use for her to try to get away, for we had no railroad then, and escape was almost impossible. I therefore tried to make her more cheerful, and told her that a girl as young as she was—for she was scarcely seventeen—had much to live for. But her unhappiness had become almost a settled melancholy, and she seemed to be interested in nothing. Besides which, the task I attempted was all the more difficult as I was not at all happy myself.
One day the conversation happened to turn upon Polygamy, and in a moment I saw that all her trouble arose from that miserable doctrine, and from that alone. We had not exchanged many words upon the subject when she exclaimed: “Oh, how I hate Polygamy! God forgive me; but I cannot help it, Sister Stenhouse! I do hate it; and yet I believe that it is true.” Poor child! I understood her too well, for her position was exactly mine. From that moment we were fast friends.
Here was the child of one of the greatest fanatics that Mormonism has ever known, one of the wildest advocates of the “Celestial Order of Marriage,” perfectly loathing the system; and yet, poor girl, believing it firmly, and believing too that she could not obtain salvation unless she entered into it. How I pitied and loved that poor girl!—and yet what strength or consolation could I offer her, being myself as painfully situated as she was? Our mutual sorrow united us still more painfully in loving companionship. I had rarely met among the Mormon girls with one so thoughtful and[273] observing, so kind and gentle. She had not been with me many weeks before she had entwined herself so completely round my heart that I was lonely when she stayed away, and I tried to keep her with me altoge............