At the end of our two days’ sojourn, we left Great Salt Lake City
hearty and well fed and happy—physically superb but not so very much
wiser, as regards the “Mormon question,” than we were when we
arrived, perhaps. We had a deal more “information” than we had
before, of course, but we did not know what portion of it was reliable and
what was not—for it all came from acquaintances of a day—strangers,
strictly speaking. We were told, for instance, that the dreadful “Mountain
Meadows Massacre” was the work of the Indians entirely, and that the
Gentiles had meanly tried to fasten it upon the Mormons; we were told,
likewise, that the Indians were to blame, partly, and partly the Mormons;
and we were told, likewise, and just as positively, that the Mormons were
almost if not wholly and completely responsible for that most treacherous
and pitiless butchery. We got the story in all these different shapes, but
it was not till several years afterward that Mrs. Waite’s book,
“The Mormon Prophet,” came out with Judge Cradlebaugh’s
trial of the accused parties in it and revealed the truth that the latter
version was the correct one and that the Mormons were the
assassins. All our “information” had three sides to it, and so
I gave up the idea that I could settle the “Mormon question”
in two days. Still I have seen newspaper correspondents do it in one.
I left Great Salt Lake a good deal confused as to what state of things
existed there—and sometimes even questioning in my own mind whether
a state of things existed there at all or not. But presently I remembered
with a lightening sense of relief that we had learned two or three trivial
things there which we could be certain of; and so the two days were not
wholly lost. For instance, we had learned that we were at last in a
pioneer land, in absolute and tangible reality.
The high prices charged for trifles were eloquent of high freights and
bewildering distances of freightage. In the east, in those days, the
smallest moneyed denomination was a penny and it represented the smallest
purchasable quantity of any commodity. West of Cincinnati the smallest
coin in use was the silver five-cent piece and no smaller quantity of an
article could be bought than “five cents’ worth.” In
Overland City the lowest coin appeared to be the ten-cent piece; but in
Salt Lake there did not seem to be any money in circulation smaller than a
quarter, or any smaller quantity purchasable of any commodity than
twenty-five cents’ worth. We had always been used to half dimes and
“five cents’ worth” as the minimum of financial
negotiations; but in Salt Lake if one wanted a cigar, it was a quarter; if
he wanted a chalk pipe, it was a quarter; if he wanted a peach, or a
candle, or a newspaper, or a shave, or a little Gentile whiskey to rub on
his corns to arrest indigestion and keep him from having the toothache,
twenty-five cents was the price, every time. When we looked at the
shot-bag of silver, now and then, we seemed to be wasting our substance in
riotous living, but if we referred to the expense account we could see
that we had not been doing anything of the kind.
But people easily get reconciled to big money and big prices, and fond and
vain of both—it is a descent to little coins and cheap prices that
is hardest to bear and slowest to take hold upon one’s toleration.
After a month’s acquaintance with the twenty-five cent minimum, the
average human being is ready to blush every time he thinks of his
despicable five-cent days. How sunburnt with blushes I used to get in
gaudy Nevada, every time I thought of my first financial experience in
Salt Lake. It was on this wise (which is a favorite expression of great
authors, and a very neat one, too, but I never hear anybody say on
this wise when they are talking). A young half-breed with a complexion
like a yellow-jacket asked me if I would have my boots blacked. It was at
the Salt Lake House the morning after we arrived. I said yes, and he
blacked them. Then I handed him a silver five-cent piece, with the
benevolent air of a person who is conferring wealth and blessedness upon
poverty and suffering. The yellow-jacket took it with what I judged to be
suppressed emotion, and laid it reverently down in the middle of his broad
hand. Then he began to contemplate it, much as a philosopher contemplates
a gnat’s ear in the ample field of his microscope. Several
mountaineers, teamsters, stage-drivers, etc., drew near and dropped into
the tableau and fell to surveying the money with that attractive
indifference to formality which is noticeable in the hardy pioneer.
Presently the yellow-jacket handed the half dime back to me and told me I
ought to keep my money in my pocket-book instead of in my soul, and then I
wouldn’t get it cramped and shriveled up so!
What a roar of vulgar laughter there was! I destroyed the mongrel reptile
on the spot, but I smiled and smiled all the time I was detaching his
scalp, for the remark he made was good for an “Injun.”
Yes, we had learned in Salt Lake to be charged great prices without
letting the inward shudder appear on the surface—for even already we
had overheard and noted the tenor of conversations among drivers,
conductors, and hostlers, and finally among citizens of Salt Lake, until
we were well aware that these superior beings despised “emigrants.”
We permitted no tell-tale shudders and winces in our countenances, for we
wanted to seem pioneers, or Mormons, half-breeds, teamsters,
stage-drivers, Mountain Meadow assassins—anything in the world that
the plains and Utah respected and admired—but we were wretchedly
ashamed of being “emigrants,” and sorry enough that we had
white shirts and could not swear in the presence of ladies without looking
the other way.
And many a time in Nevada, afterwards, we had occasion to remember with
humiliation that we were “emigrants,” and consequently a low
and inferior sort of creatures. Perhaps the reader has visited Utah,
Nevada, or California, even in these latter days, and while communing with
himself upon the sorrowful banishment of these countries from what he
considers “the world,” has had his wings clipped by finding
that he is the one to be pitied, and that there are entire
populations around him ready and willing to do it for him—yea, who
are complacently doing it for him already, wherever he steps his foot.
Poor thing, they are making fun of his hat; and the cut of his New York
coat; and his conscientiousness about his grammar; and his feeble
profanity; and his consumingly ludicrous ignorance of ores, shafts,
tunnels, and other things which he never saw before, and never felt enough
interest in to read about. And all the time that he is thinking what a sad
fate it is to be exiled to that far country, that lonely land, the
citizens around him are looking down on him with a blighting compassion
because he is an “emigrant” instead of that proudest and
blessedest creature that exists on all the earth, a “FORTY-NINER.”
The accustomed coach life began again, now, and by midnight it almost
seemed as if we never had been out of our snuggery among the mail sacks at
all. We had made one alteration, however. We had provided enough bread,
boiled ham and hard boiled eggs to last double the six hundred miles of
staging we had still to do.
And it was comfort in those succeeding days to sit up and contemplate the
majestic panorama of mountains and valleys spread out below us and eat ham
and hard boiled eggs while our spiritual natures revelled alternately in
rainbows, thunderstorms, and peerless sunsets. Nothing helps scenery like
ham and eggs. Ham and eggs, and after these a pipe—an old, rank,
delicious pipe—ham and eggs and scenery, a “down grade,”
a flying coach, a fragrant pipe and a contented heart—these make
happiness. It is what all the ages have struggled for.
