MARRIAGE FOR THE DEAD—ENTERING INTO POLYGAMY—THE NEW WIFE.  
The following evening I went round again to the house, to gaze once more at the form of my dear friend. She was lying in her coffin, dressed for the grave, and I looked at her long and tenderly as she rested sleeping there. Her features were peaceful and natural as if in slumber; an expression of calm tranquillity hovered around her countenance, and in the repose of death she seemed almost happy. Poor girl! her life had been short indeed, and she had known but little pleasure; but I believed that she was now beyond the reach of earthly sorrow and earthly disappointment, happy in that land where suffering and tears are all unknown. “There shall be no night there,” the Lord of that other life had said. Sorrow and sighing shall flee away from that bright and glorious land; and the grief and pain, which on earth are the portion of so many tried and weary hearts, shall find no entrance into that eternal rest which our Father in heaven has prepared for us beyond the floods of death.
Oh, better far! I thought, it is that thus she should pass away. True, she has seen but little of life, and has not tasted many of its joys; but, as a compensation, how much has she been spared! She was so gentle and so sensitive, so unfit to battle with the stern realities of existence, that I felt she had gained rather than lost in being taken away in the morning of her life.
I now expected very soon to be called upon to undergo the most painful ordeal that any wife can be required to pass through: I was to give my husband another wife—such is the sacrifice demanded of every Mormon woman.
The thought of doing this was worse than death to me. I felt injured, humiliated and degraded by it, and yet I still tried to believe that it was the will of God, and must therefore be right. To me, this outrage upon all the purest feelings of[294] womanhood seemed more like the will of men—men of the basest and most unholy passions. It was repulsive to me in whatever form it was presented, but still I reproached my own rebellious heart for feeling so, for I had been told that the ways of the Lord were past finding out, and, however unlike Him this Revelation might appear, we Mormon women had been taught that it was our duty to bend our wills and to suffer in unquestioning and uncomplaining silence.
As the time approached, I felt like a condemned criminal awaiting the day of execution. A sense of apprehension, a dread of coming evil, was ever present to my mind, and everything appeared to me through the medium of my griefs. To a certain extent, my husband also suffered, for it would be impossible, I think, for any man to see his wife suffering so intensely without feeling for her, and I sometimes believed that his sympathy for me was so great, that, if he had dared, he would even then have refused to obey the counsel of the Priesthood.
Then, too, he had a little trouble of his own, for he began to realize that this innovation upon the sanctity of our home would make a great change in his future—his freedom would be gone.
However gratifying it may be to a man’s feelings to know that there is no limit to his privileges, and that he is always at liberty—no matter how many wives he may already possess—to fall in love with every pretty girl he meets, and marry her if she consents; yet every intelligent man must be conscious that it can be no easy matter to keep peace between many wives in one house, and that, if he wishes to act rightly by all, he must train himself to be scrupulously just, never showing any partiality in look or deed, or even by a word. There are many such men among the Mormons. They are conscientious and good men, who try to live their religion, but who at the same time desire to act kindly towards their wives. My husband began to realize the great responsibility that he was about to take upon himself, and, seeing his thoughtful and troubled look, I tried to hide my own feelings; for every true wife knows that nothing so powerfully arouses a woman to struggle with her own sorrows as the knowledge that her husband is unhappy.
The dreaded day at length arrived, the day which for so long, and with such painful forebodings, I had anticipated. I had spent a very wakeful and unhappy night, and felt very sick and nervous, for I was about to become a mother, and my[295] health was anything but strong. I hardly felt as if I should have courage to go through that day. I was, however, compelled to nerve myself to the task, and I began to make my preparations for going to the Endowment House. The only thing that gave me strength was the thought that my husband had consented that I should go through the ceremony of being married to him that day for Carrie; for even then I supposed that those who would be married in heaven must first be married on earth, and that, too, by those who had received authority from on high.
Ever since I had first embraced Mormonism I had been entirely cut off from Gentile society, although living in the Gentile world. Abroad, and also when in New York, the cares of a family kept me very much at home, and the continual state of apprehension in which I was rendered me averse to visiting among friends. Thus it was that I never conversed freely with any one who could have informed me truthfully of the origin of Mormonism, and consequently I brooded over my religion as a melancholy fact; but, though with moments of weakness and wavering, I never thoroughly doubted its divine origin. The terrible sacrifice which was about to be required of me might, I thought, be painful to make, but it was no less the will of God. I must submit, whatever the effort might cost me.
The morning was bright and lovely—a morning calculated to inspire happy hopes and pleasant feelings; but to me it brought nothing but fear and trembling. Even the innocent prattle of my children annoyed me, and they, not knowing how deeply I was suffering, looked at me with wonder in their eyes. Oh, I thought, surely my husband will at length comprehend the greatness of the love I bear him? surely he will now appreciate the sacrifice I make for his sake and for my religion? Even now, if I did not know that he b............