The Temple Square is in the immediate neighborhood, and is of the same size. It is inclosed by a wall even more massive than the others, plastered and divided into panels. Near its southwestern corner stands the Tabernacle, a long, one-storied building, with an immense roof, containing a hall which will hold three thousand people. There the Mormon religious services are conducted during the winter months; but throughout the summer the usual place of gathering to listen to the sermons is in "boweries," so called, which are constructed by planting posts in the ground and weaving over them a flat roof of willow-twigs. An excavation near the centre of the square, partially filled with dirt previously to the exodus to Provo, marks the spot where the Temple is to rise. It is intended that this edifice shall infinitely surpass in magnificence its predecessor at Nauvoo. The design purports to be a revelation from heaven, and, if so, must have emanated from some one of the Gothic architects of the Middle Ages whose taste had become bewildered by his residence among the spheres; for the turrets are to be surmounted by figures of sun, moon, and stars, and the whole building bedecked with such celestial emblems. Only part of the foundation-wall has yet been laid, but it sinks thirty feet deep and is eight feet broad at the surface of the ground. Its length, according to the heavenly plan, is to be two hundred and twenty feet, and its width one hundred and fifty feet. Beside the Tabernacle and the incipient Temple, the only considerable building within the square is the Endowment-House, where those rites are celebrated which bind a member to fidelity to the Church under penalty of death, and admit him to the privilege of polygamy.

The other principal buildings within the city are the Council-House, a square pile of sandstone, once used as the Capitol,—and the County Court-House, yet unfinished, above which rises a cupola covered with tin. Most of the houses in the immediate vicinity of Young's are two stories high, for that is the aristocratic quarter of the town. In the outskirts, however, they never exceed one story, and resemble in dimensions the innumerable cobblers'-shops of Eastern Massachusetts.

None of the streets have names, except those which bound the Temple Square and are known as North, South, East, and West Temple Streets, and also the broad avenue which receives the road from Emigration Canon and is called Emigration Street. Except on East Temple or Main Street, which is the business street of the city, the houses are all built at least twenty feet back from the sidewalk, and to each one is attached a considerable plot of ground. There is no provision for lighting the streets at night. The cotton-wood trees along the borders of the gutters have attained a considerable growth during the eight or nine years since they were planted, and afford an agreeable shade to all the sidewalks.

Around a great portion of the city stretches a mud wall with embrasures and loopholes for musketry, which was built under Young's direction in 1853, ostensibly to guard against Indian attacks, but really to keep the people busy and prevent their murmuring. To the east of this runs a narrow canal, which was dug by the voluntary labor of the Saints, nearly fifteen miles to Cottonwood Creek, for the transportation of stone to be used in building the Temple.

Just outside the city-limits, near the northeastern corner of the wall, lies the Cemetery, on a piece of undulating ground traversed by deep gullies, and unadorned even by a solitary tree,—the only vegetation sprouting out of its parched soil being a melancholy crop of weeds interspersed with languid sunflowers. The disproportion between the deaths of adults and those of children, which has been a subject for comment by every writer on Mormonism, is peculiarly noticeable there. Most of the graves are indicated only by rough boards, on which are scrawled rudely, with pencil or paint, the names and ages of the dead, and usually also verses from the Bible and scraps of poetry; but among all the inscriptions it is remarkable that there is not a single quotation from the "Book of Mormon." The graves are totally neglected after the bodies are consigned to them. Nowhere has a shrub or a flower been planted by any affectionate hand, except in one little corner of the inclosure which is assigned to the Gentiles, between whose dust and that of the Mormons there seems to exist a distinction like that which prevails in Catholic countries between the ashes of heretics and those of faithful churchmen. The mode of burial is singularly careless. A funeral procession is rarely seen; and such instances are mentioned by travellers as that of a father bearing to the grave the coffin of his own child upon his shoulder.

The interiors of the houses are as neat as could be expected, considering the extent of the families. Very often, three wives, one husband, and half-a-dozen children will be huddled together in a hovel containing only two habitable rooms,—an arrangement of course subversive of decency. Few people are able to purchase carpets, and their furniture is of the coarsest and commonest kind. There are few, if any, families which maintain servants. In that of Brigham Young, each woman has a room assigned her, for the neatness of which she is herself responsible;—Young's own chamber is in the rear of the office of the President of the Church, upon the ground floor. The precise number of the female inmates can often be computed from the exterior of the houses. These being frequently divided into compartments, each with its own entrance from the yard, and its own chimney, and being generally only one story in height, the number of doors is an exact index to that of residents.

The domestic habits of the people vary greatly according to their nativity. Of the forty-five thousand inhabitants of the Territory, at least one-half are immigrants from England and Wales,—the scum of the manufacturing towns and mining districts, so superstitious as to have been capable of imbibing the Mormon faith,—though between what is preached in Great Britain and what is practised in America there exists a wide difference,—and so destitute in circumstances as to have been incapable of deteriorating their fortunes by emigration. Possibly one-fifth are Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians. This allows a remainder of three-tenths for the native American element. An Irishman or a German is rarely found. Of the Americans, by far the greater proportion were born in the Northeastern States; and the three principal characters in the history of the Church—Smith, Young, and Kimball—all originated in Vermont, but were reared in Western New York, a region which has been the hot-bed of American isms from the discovery of the Golden Bible to the outbreak of the Rochester rappings. This American element maintains, in all affairs of the Church, its natural political ascendency. Of the twelve Apostles only one is a foreigner, and among the rest of the ecclesiastical dignitaries the proportion is not very different.

The Scandinavian Mormons are very clannish in their disposition. They occupy some settlements exclusively, and in Salt Lake City there is one quarter tenanted wholly by them, and nicknamed "Denmark," just as that portion of Cincinnati monopolized by Germans is known as "over the Rhine." Like their English and Welsh associates, they belonged to the lowest classes of the mechanics and peasantry of their native countries. They are all clownish and brutal. Their women work in the fields. In their houses and gardens there is no symptom of taste, or of the recollection of former and more innocent days; while in every cottage owned by Americans there is visible, at least, a clock, or a pair of China vases, or a rude picture, which once held a similar position in some farm-house in New England.

It is not intended to discuss here the cardinal points of the Mormon faith, for the subject is too extensive for the limits of this article. A great misapprehension, however, prevails concerning polygamy, that it was one of the original doctrines of the Church. On the contrary, it was expressly prohibited in the Book of Mormon, which declares:—

"Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord. ... Wherefore hearken to the word of the Lord: There shall not any man among you have save it be one wife, and concubines he shall have none; for I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women."—p. 118.

Up to this date, there have been four eras in the history of polygamy among the Mormons: the first, from about 1833 to 1843, during which it was practised stealthily only by those Church leaders to whom it was considered prudent to impart the secret; the second, from 1843 to 1852, during which its existence was known to the Church, but denied to the world; the third, from 1852 to 1856, during which it was left to the discretion of individuals whether to adopt its practice or not; and the fourth, since 1856, when its acceptance was inculcated as essential to happiness in this world and salvation in the next. It was the inevitable tendency of Mormonism, like every other religious delusion, from the advent of John of Leyden to that of the Spiritualists, to disturb the natural relation of the sexes under the Christian dispensation. The mystery surrounding the subject constituted the most attractive charm of the religion, both to the initiated and to those who were seeking to be admitted to the secrets of the Endowment,—for the Endowed alone possess the privilege of a plurality of wives. But until the community had become firmly fixed in Utah, no one dared to justify or even to proclaim the doctrine. At the time of the passage of the Organic Act of the Territory, in the autumn of 1850, and repeatedly during the next two years, prominent Mormons at Washington and New York denied its existence, with the most solemn asseverations. It was on Sunday, August 29th, 1852, that it was openly avowed at Salt Lake City,—Brigham Young on that day producing the copy of a revelation, pretended to have been received by Smith on the 12th of July, 1843, which annulled the monogamic injunctions of the Book of Mormon, and stating, that, "although the doctrine of polygamy has not been preached by the elders, the people have believed in it for years." Upon the same occasion, another doctrine was urged,—that human beings upon earth propagate merely bodies, the souls which inhabit them being begotten by spirits in heaven.

The number of the wives of many of the principal Mormons has been greatly exaggerated. Attached to Young's establishment in Salt Lake City, there are only sixteen. His first wife occupies the Mansion-House exclusively, while the others are quartered in the Lion-House. Besides these, he has probably fifty or sixty more, scattered all over the Territory, and in the principal cities of the United States and of Great Britain. His living children do not exceed thirty in number. Kimball's wives, resident in Salt Lake City, are quite as numerous as Young's, and his children even more so. Both of them aim to reproduce the domestic life of the Biblical patriarchs; and within the squares which they occupy their descendants dwell also, with their wives and progeny, all of them acknowledging the control of the head of the family. The harems of very few of the Church dignitaries approach these in magnitude. The extent of the practice of polygamy cannot be determined by a residence in Salt Lake City alone, for it is there that those Church officers congregate whose wealth enables them to maintain large families. As the traveller journeys northward or southward, he finds the instances diminish in almost exact proportion to his remoteness from the central ecclesiastical influence. There is even a sect of Mormons, called Gladdenites, after their founder, one Gladden Bishop, who deny the right of Young to supreme authority over the Church, and discountenance polygamy. No computation of their number can be made, for few of them dare avow their heresy, on account of the persecution which is the invariable result. The leaders of this sect maintain that a majority of the married men in Utah have but one wife each, and their assertion has never been controverted.

One of the most monstrous results of the practice is the indifference with which an incestuous connection is tolerated. The cohabitation, with the same man, of a mother, and her daughter by a previous marriage, is not unfrequent; and there are other instances even more disgusting. One or two of them will exemplify the character of the whole. One George D. Watt, an Englishman, residing at Salt Lake City, has for his fourth wife his own half-sister, who had been previously divorced from Brigham Young; and one Aaron Johnson, the Bishop of the town of Springville, on Lake Utah, has seven wives, four of whom are sisters, and his own nieces. Young himself has declared in print, that he looks forward to the time when his son by one wife shall marry his daughter by another. Marriages also are effected with girls who are mere children. Accustomed from their cradles to sights and sounds calculated to impart precocious development, they mature rapidly, and few of them remain single after attaining the age of sixteen. They look around for husbands, and understand, that, if they marry young men and become first wives, in course of time other wives will be associated with them; and they conclude, therefore, that it is as well for themselves to unite with some Bishop or High-Priest, with perhaps half-a-dozen wives already, who is able to feed his family well and clothe them decently; so they plunge into polygamy at once. Another result of the practice is universal obscenity of language among both sexes. The published sermons of the Mormon leaders are utterly vile in this respect, although they are somewhat expurgated before being printed. They consider no language profane from which the name of the Deity is exempted.

There is, unquestionably, much unhappiness in families where polygamy prevails,—daily bickering, jealousies, and heart-burnings,—but it is carefully concealed from the knowledge of the public. If domestic troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually had to Brigham Young for a divorce. There are women in Salt Lake City who have been married and divorced half-a-dozen times within a year. The first wife maintains a supremacy over all the others. On the occasion of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of "sealing" is afterwards administered by Young. By the civil process, in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband "for time," and by the ecclesiastical solemnization "for eternity." Every wife taken after the first is called a "spiritual," and is "sealed" ecclesiastically only, not civilly. It follows, as a legitimate consequence, that the first wife of one man "for time" may be the "spiritual" wife of another man "for eternity." The power of sealing and unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies. The ceremony is performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham's square, which is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches. In every instance of divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate of the fact, for which a fee of ten or eleven dollars is exacted. When a polygamist dies, it becomes the duty of his "next friend" to care for his wives. Thus, when Young became the President of the Church, he succeeded to all the widows of Joseph Smith.

Every year some modification of the system is effected, which tends to increase still further the confusion in the relations of the sexes. The latest is the doctrine, (which, like polygamy in its earlier stages, is believed, but not avowed,) that absence is temporary death, so far as concerns the transference of wives. This is intended to apply to the two or three hundred missionaries who are dispatched yearly to all parts of the globe, from Stockholm to Macao. It is astonishing that these missionary efforts, which have been pursued with unremitting zeal for the last twenty years, should not have ingrafted upon Mormonism some degree of that refinement which is supposed to result from travel. On the contrary, they seem to have elaborated the natural brutality of the Anglo-Saxon character; and especially with regard to polygamy, their effect has been to acquaint the people of Utah with the grossest features of its practice in foreign lands, and encourage them to imitation. Every Mormon, prominent in the Church, however illiterate in other respects, is thoroughly acquainted with the extent and characteristics of polygamy in Asiatic countries, and prepared to defend his own domestic habits, in argument, by historical and geographical references. Not one of their missionaries has ever been admitted to intercourse with the higher classes of European society. Their sphere of labor and acquaintance has been entirely among those whom they would term the lowly, but who might also be called the credulous and vulgar. The abuse of a knowledge of the machinery of the Masonic order—from which they have been formally excluded—is one of the least evil of their practices, not only abroad, but at home. Of the Endowment, one apostate Mormon has declared that "its signs, tokens, marks, and ideas are plagiarized from Masonry"; and it was a notorious fact, that every one of the Mormon prisoners at the camp at Fort Bridger was accustomed to endeavor to influence the sentinels at the guard-tents by means of the Masonic signs.

This cursory review of the domestic condition of the Mormons would not be complete without some allusion to the Indians who infest the whole country. In the North, having their principal village at the foot of the Wind River Mountains, in the southeastern corner of Oregon, is the tribe of Mountain Snakes or Shoshonees, and the kindred tribe of Bannocks. Throughout all the valleys south of Salt Lake City are the numerous bands of the great tribe of Utahs. Still farther south are the Pyides. The Snakes are superior in condition to any of the others; for, during a portion of the year, they have access to the buffalo, which have not crossed the Wahsatch Range into the Great Basin, within the recollection of the oldest trapper. The only wild animals common in the country of the Utahs are the hare, or "jackass-rabbit," the wild-cat, the wolf, and the grizzly bear. There are few antelope or elk. Trout abound in the mountain-brooks and in Lake Utah. In the Salt Lake, as in the Dead Sea, there are no fish. Before the advent of the Mormons, the habits of all the Utah bands were very degraded. No agency had been established among them. They had few guns and blankets. For several years they were engaged in constant hostilities with the people of the young and feeble settlements,—their own method and implements of warfare improving steadily all the while. Ultimately, however, the Mormons inaugurated a system of Indian policy, which was highly successful. They propagated their religion among the Utahs, baptized some of the most prominent chiefs into the Church, fed and clothed them, and thereby acquired an ascendency over most of the bands, which they attempted to use to the detriment of the army during the winter of 1857-8, but without success. Brigham Young, being vested with the superintendence of Indian affairs, during his entire term of service as Governor, abused the functions of that office. He taught the tribe, that there was a distinction between "Americans" and "Mormons,"—and that the latter were their friends, while they were free to commit any depredations on the former which they might see fit. These infamous teachings were counteracted with considerable success by Dr. Hurt, the Indian Agent, to whom allusion has frequently been made; but it was impossible wholly to neutralize their effect. Some of the Mormons even took squaws for spiritual wives; and in all the settlements, from Provo to the Santa Clara, there are scores of half-breed children, acknowledging half-a-dozen mothers, some white, some red. The Utahs, though a beggarly, are a docile tribe. Several Government farms have now been established among them, and they display more than ordinary aptitude for work. But they require to be spurred to regular labor. None of the charges which have been preferred against the Mormons, of direct participation in the murder of Americans by the Indians in the southern portion of the Territory, have ever been substantiated by legal evidence; but no person can become familiar with the relations which they sustain to those tribes, without attaching to them some degree of credibility. The most noted instances were the slaughter of Captain Gunnison and his exploring party, near Lake Sevier, in October, 1853; and the horrible massacre of more than a hundred emigrants on their way to California, at the Mountain Meadows, still farther south, in September, 1857, from which only those children were spared who were too young to speak.

The history of events in Utah since the encamping of the army in Cedar Valley and the return of the Mormons to the northern settlements is too recent to need to be recounted. It has been established by satisfactory experiments, that law is powerless in the Territory when it conflicts with the Church. No Gentile, whose property was confiscated during the rebellion, has yet obtained redress. The legislature refuses to provide for the expenses of the District Courts while enforcing the Territorial laws. The grand juries refuse to find indictments. The traverse juries refuse to convict Mormons. The witnesses perjure themselves without scruple and without exception. The unruly crowd of camp-followers, which is the inseparable attendant of an army, has concentrated in Salt Lake City, and is in constant contact and conflict with the Mormon population. An apprehension prevails, day after day, that the presence of the army may be demanded there to prevent mob-law and bloodshed. The Governor is alien in his disposition to most of the other Federal officers; and the Judges are probably already on their way to the States, prepared to resign their commissions. The whole condition of affairs justifies a prediction made by Brigham Young, June 17th, 1855, in a sermon, in which he declared:—

"Though I may not be Governor here, my power will not be diminished. No man they can send here will have much influence with this community, unless he be the man of their choice. Let them send whom they will, it does not diminish my influence one particle."

The consequences of the Expedition, therefore, have not corresponded to the original expectation of its projectors. So far as the political condition of the Territory is concerned, the result, filtered down, amounts simply to a demonstration of the impolicy of applying the doctrine of Squatter Sovereignty as a rule for its government. The administration of President Polk was an epoch in the history of the continent. By the annexation of Texas a system of territorial aggrandizement was inaugurated; and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, by which California, Utah, and New Mexico were acquired, was a legitimate result. Every child knows that the tendency is toward the acquisition of all North America. But the statesmen who originated a policy so grand did not stop to establish a system of Territorial government correspondent to its necessities. The character of such a Territorial policy is now the principal subject upon which the great parties of the nation are divided; and its development will constitute the chief political achievement of the generation. On one side, it is proposed to leave each community to work out its own destiny, trusting to Providence for the result. On the other, it is contended, that the only safe doctrine is, that supreme authority over the Territories resides in Congress, which it is its duty to assign to such hands and in such degrees as it may deem expedient, with a view to create homogeneous States; that the same influences which moulded Minnesota into a State homogeneous to Massachusetts might operate on Cuba, or Sonora and Chihuahua, without avail; and that to various districts the various methods should be applied which a father would employ to secure the obedience and welfare of his children.

At the very outset, the Territory of Utah now presents itself as a subject for the application of the one system or the other. To all intents and purposes, the Mormons are proved to be a people more foreign to the population of the States than the inhabitants of Cuba or Mexico. Alien in great part by birth, and entirely alien in religion, there never can occur in the history of the country an instance of a community harder to govern, with a view to adapt it to harmonious association with the States on the Atlantic and the Pacific. It is undeniably demonstrated that it is unsafe to trust it to administer a government in accordance with republican ideas; for it acknowledges a higher law than even the human conscience, in the will of a person whom it professes to believe a vicegerent of Divinity, and in obedience to whom perjury, robbery, incest, and even murder, may be justifiable,—for his commands are those of Heaven. It is obvious that it is fruitless to anticipate fair dealing from a people professing such doctrines; and the result has shown, that, in transactions with Mormons, even under oath, no one who does not acknowledge a standard of religious belief similar to their own can count upon justice any farther than they may think it politic to accord it. The army is, indeed, placed in a position to suppress instantaneously another forcible outbreak; but everybody is aware that there are means of annulling the operation of law quite as effectually as by an uprising in arms. Recent proceedings in the courts of the extreme Southern States have caused this fact to be keenly appreciated. The pirates who sailed the slavers "Echo" and "Wanderer" yet remain to be punished. So far as South Carolina and Georgia are concerned, the law declaring the slave-trade piracy is a dead letter; and the sentiment which prevails toward it in Charleston and Savannah is an imperfect index of that which is manifested at Salt Lake City toward all national authority.

The legislation of Utah has been conducted with a view to precisely the condition of affairs which now exists, and the Territorial statute-book shows that the transfer of executive power from Brigham Young had long been anticipated. It is impracticable to adduce, in this place, proof of the fact in extenso; but a brief enumeration of some of the principal statutes will indicate the character of the entire code. An act exists incorporating the Mormon Church with power to hold property, both real and personal, to an indefinite extent, exempt from taxation, coupled with authority to establish laws and criteria for its safety, government, comfort, and control, and for the punishment of all offences relating to fellowship, according to its covenants. By this act the Church is invested with absolute and perpetual sovereignty. Under it the whole system of polygamy is conducted, for plural marriages are sanctioned by the covenants; the Danite organization is authorized, for it is instituted for the comfort and control of the Church, and the punishment of offences relative to fellowship; the burden of the taxes is thrown in a yearly increasing ratio upon Gentiles, for the Church property exempted from taxation amounts already to several millions of dollars, and increases every day; and the treasonable rites of the Endowment are celebrated, and the inferior members of the Church tithed and pillaged, for the benefit of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles. Acts also exist legalizing negro and Indian slavery. There are within the Territory at the present time not more than fifty or sixty negroes, but there are several hundred Indians, held in servitude. These are mostly Pyides, into whose country some of the Utah bands make periodical forays, capturing their young women and children, whom they sell to the Navajoes in New Mexico, as well as to the Mormons. There are other acts, which rob the United States judges of their jurisdiction, civil, criminal, and in equity, and confer it on the Probate Courts; which forbid the citation of any reports, even those of the Supreme Court of the United States, during any trial; which regulate the descent of property so as to include the issue of polygamic marriages among the legal heirs; which withdraw from exemption from attachment the entire property of persons suspected of an intention to leave the Territory; which authorize the invasion of domiciles for purposes of search, upon the simple order of any judicial officer; which legalize the rendition of verdicts in civil cases upon the concurrence of two-thirds of the jurors; which command attorneys to present in court, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, in all cases, every fact of which they are cognizant, "whether calculated to make against their clients or not"; which restrict the institution of proceedings against adulterers to the husband or the wife of one of the guilty parties; which levy duties on all goods imported into the Territory for sale; which abolish the freedom of the ballot-box, by providing that each vote shall be numbered, and a record kept of the names of the electors with the numbers attached, which, together with the ballots, shall be preserved for reference; and which empower the county courts to impose taxes to an indefinite amount on whomsoever they may please, for the erection of fortifications within their respective jurisdictions. But the most extraordinary and unconstitutional series of acts—no less than sixty in number—exists with regard to the primary disposal of the soil, with which the Territorial legislature is expressly forbidden by the Organic Act to interfere. These pretend to confer upon Church dignitaries, and especially on Brigham Young and his family, tracts of land probably amounting in the aggregate to more than ten thousand square miles, as well as the exclusive right to establish bridges and ferries over the principal rivers in the Territory,—together with the exclusive use of those streams flowing down from the Wahsatch Mountains which are most valuable for irrigating and manufacturing purposes. The virtual control of the settlement of the eastern portion of Utah is thus vested in the Church; for these grants include almost all the lands which are immediately valuable for occupation. After a glance at a list of them, it is not hard to understand the causes of the great disparity in the distribution of wealth among the Mormons. They have been so allotted as to benefit a very few at the expense of the whole people; and they are protected by a terrorism which no one dares to confront in order to challenge their validity. The majority of the population are ignorant of their rights,—and too pusillanimous to maintain them against the hierarchy, if they were not. They therefore contribute to its coffers not merely their tithing, but heavy exactions also for grazing their cattle on pastures to which they themselves have just as much title as the nominal proprietors, and for grinding their grain and purchasing their lumber at mills on streams which are of right common to all the settlers on their banks.

From the Utah Expedition, then, it has become patent to the world, if it is not to ourselves, that the Mormons are unwilling to administer a republican form of government, if not incapable of doing so. The author of the letter recently addressed by "A Man of the Latin Race" to the Emperor Napoleon, on the subject of French influence in America, comments especially upon this fact as symptomatic of the disintegration of this republic; and allusion is made to it in every other foreign review of our political condition. It is obviously inconsistent with our national dignity that a remedy should not be immediately applied; but when we seek for such, only two courses of action are discernible, in the maze of political quibbles and constitutional scruples that at once suggest themselves. One is, to repeal the Organic Act and place the Territory under military control; the other is, to buy the Mormons out of Utah, offering them a reasonable compensation for the improvements they have made there, as also transportation to whatever foreign region they may select for a future abode.

The embarrassments which might result from the adoption of the former course are obvious. It would be attended with immense expense, and would embitter the Mormons still more against the National Government; and it would also deter Gentiles from emigrating to a region where three thousand Federal bayonets would constitute the sole guaranty of the security of their persons and property.

The other course is not only practicable, but humane and expedient. During his whole career, Brigham Young committed no greater mistake than when he settled in Utah a community whose recruits are almost without exception drawn from foreign lands; for, since the removal from Illinois, every attempt to propagate Mormonism in the American States has been a failure. Every avenue of communication with Utah is necessarily obstructed. No railroad penetrates to within eleven hundred miles of Salt Lake Valley. There is no watercourse within four hundred miles, on which navigation is practicable. Neither the Columbia nor the Colorado empties into seas bordered by nations from which the Mormons derive accessions; and the length of a voyage up the Mississippi, Missouri, and Yellowstone forbids any expectation that their channels will ever become a pathway to the centre of the continent. The road to Utah must always lead overland, and travel upon it is the more expensive from the fact that no great passenger-transportation companies exist at either of the termini. Each family of emigrants must provide its own outfit of provisions, wagons, and oxen, or mules. Through the agency of what is called the Perpetual Emigration Fund of the Church, the capital of which amounts to several millions of dollars,—which was instituted professedly to befriend, but really to fleece the foreign converts,—few Englishmen arrive at Salt Lake City without having exhausted their own means and incurred an amount of debt which it requires the labor of many years to discharge. The physical sufferings of the journey, also, are severe and often fatal. The bleak cemetery at Salt Lake City contains but a small proportion of the Mormon dead. Along the thousand miles of road from the Missouri River to the Great Lake, there stand, thicker than milestones, memorials of those who failed on the way. A rough board, a pile of stones, a grave ransacked by wolves, crown many a swell of the bottom-lands along the Platte; and across the broad belt of mountains there is no spot so desolate as to be unmarked by one of these monuments of the march of Mormonism.

As these difficulties of transit subside under the surge of population toward the new State of Oregon, or to the gold-diggings on the head-waters of the South Fork of the Platte, an element must permeate Utah which would be fatal to the supremacy of the Church. That depends, as has been so often repeated, upon isolation. Already the presence of the army with its crowd of unruly dependents has begun to disturb it. In the trail of the troops, like sparks shed from a rocket, a legion of mail-stations and trading-posts have sprung up, which materially facilitate communication with the East. A horseman, starting now from Fort Leavenworth, with a good animal, can ride to Salt Lake City, sleeping under cover every night; while in July, 1857, when the army commenced its march from the frontier, there were stretches of more than three hundred miles without a single white inhabitant. On the west, under the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, there is a settlement of several thousand Gentiles in Carson Valley, who, though nominally under the same Territorial government with the Mormons, have no real connection with them, politically, socially, or commercially, and are petitioning Congress for a Territorial organisation of their own. A telegraphic wire has already wound its way over the sierra among them, and will soon palpitate through Salt Lake City in its progress toward the Atlantic.

Brigham Young perceives this inevitable advance of Christian civilization toward his stronghold, as clearly as the most unprejudiced spectator. No one is better aware than himself, that, if the great industrial conception of the age, the Pacific Railroad, shall ever begin to be realized, the first shovelful of dirt thrown on its embankments will be the commencement of the grave of his religion and authority. Among the projects with which his brain is busy is that of yet another exodus; and it must be undertaken speedily, if at all,—for a generation is growing up in the Church with an attachment for the land in which it was reared. The pioneers of the faith, who were buffeted from Ohio to Missouri, from Missouri to Illinois, and from Illinois to the Rocky Mountains, are dwindling every year. Their migrations have been so various, that no local sentiment would influence them against another removal. Such a sentiment, if it exists at all among them, is not for Utah, but for Missouri, where they believe that the capital will be founded of that kingdom in which the Church in the progress of ages will unite the world. They dropped upon the shores of the Salt Lake in 1847, like birds spent upon the wing, only because they could not fly farther.

Two regions have been suggested for the ultimate resort of the Mormons: one, the Mosquito Coast in Central America; the other, the Island of Papua or New Guinea, among the East Indies. During the winter, while the army lay encamped at Fort Bridger, Colonel Kinney, the colonizing adventurer, endeavored to communicate from the East to Brigham Young an offer to sell to the Church several millions of acres of land on the Mosquito Coast, of which he purports to be the proprietor. His agent, however, reached no farther than Green River. But during the spring of 1858, other agents, dispatched from California, were more successful in reaching Salt Lake Valley. They were hospitably received by the Mormons, but Young declined to enter into the negotiation. The other scheme—that for an emigration to Papua—originated at Washington during the same winter. It was eagerly seized upon by Captain Walter Gibson, the same who was once imprisoned by the Dutch in Java. He put himself into communication on the subject with Mr. Bernhisel, the Mormon delegate to Congress, who appeared to regard the plan with favor. After it was developed, as a step preliminary to transmitting it to Utah for consideration, Mr. Bernhisel waited upon the President of the United States in order to ascertain whether the cooperation of the National Government in the undertaking could be expected. The reply of Mr. Buchanan was fatal to the project, which he discountenanced as a vague and wild dream.

Nevertheless, it may well be considered whether the movement toward Utah appeared any less Quixotic in 1846 than does the idea of an emigration to Papua now. On that island the Mormons would encounter no such obstacles to material prosperity as their indomitable industry has already conquered in Utah. They would find a fertile soil, a propitious climate, and a native population which could be trained to docility. Transplanted thither, they would cease to be a nuisance to America, and would become benefactors to the world by opening to commerce a region now valueless to Christendom, but of as great natural capacities as any portion of the globe. The expense of their migration need not exceed the amount already expended upon the Army of Utah, together with that necessary to maintain it in its present position for the next five years. Into the seats which they would relinquish on the border of the Salt Lake a sturdy population would pour from the Valley of the Mississippi, and develop an intelligent, Christian, and Republican State. That portion of the Mormons which would not follow the fortunes of the Church beyond the seas would soon become submerged, and the last vestige of its religion and peculiar domestic life would disappear speedily and forever from the continent.

For that consummation, every genuine Christian must fervently pray. If the Message in the Book of Mormon be, as one of its own Apostles has asserted, indeed "such, that, if false, none who persist in believing it can be saved," the sooner this nation washes its hands of responsibility for its toleration, the better for its credit in history. The Constitution, to be sure, denies to Congress the power to pass laws prohibiting the free exercise of religion; but it is the most monstrous nonsense to argue that the Federal Government is bound thereby to connive at polygamy, perjury, incest, and murder. There are principles of social order which constitute the political basis of every state in Christendom, that are violated by the practices of the Mormon Church, and which this Republic is bound to maintain without regard to any pretence that their transgressors act in pursuance of religious belief. Thirty years ago, no other doctrine would have occurred to the mind of an American statesman. It is only the special-pleadings and constitutional hair-splittings by which Slavery has been forced under national protection, that now impede Congressional intervention in the affairs of Utah. The Christian Church of the United States, also, has a duty to perform toward the Mormons, which has long been neglected. While its missionaries have been shipped by the score to India and China, it has been blind to the growth, upon the threshold of its own temple, of a pagan religion more corrupt than that of the Brahmin. Never once has a Christian preacher opened his lips in the valleys of Utah; and yet the surplice of a Christian priest would be a sight more portentous to the Mormon, on his own soil, than the bayonet of the Federal soldier.



BULLS AND BEARS.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

The next day, Monroe went with the artist to good Mr. Holworthy, and proposed to undertake the task of instructing a school. The preliminaries were speedily arranged: he was to receive a small weekly stipend, enough, with prudence, to meet his household expenses, and was to commence at once. Both of the gentlemen accompanied him to the quarter where his labor was to begin. A large room was hired in a rickety and forlorn-looking house; the benches for the scholars and a small desk and chair were the only furniture. And such scholars!—far different from the delicate, curled darlings of the private schools. The new teacher found his labor sufficiently discouraging. It was nothing less than the civilization of a troop of savages. Everything was to be done; manners, speech, moral instincts, were all equally depraved. They were to be taught neatness, respect, truth-telling, as well as the usual branches of knowledge. It was like the task of the pioneer settler in the wilderness, who must uproot trees, drain swamps, burn briers and brambles, exterminate hurtful beasts, and prepare the soil for the reception of the seeds that are to produce the future harvest. We leave him with his charge, while we attend to other personages of our story.

Mr. Sandford and his sister, upon leaving their house, took lodgings, and then began to cast about them for the means of support. The money on which he had relied was gone. His credit was utterly destroyed, and he had no hope of being reinstated in his former position. The only way he could possibly be useful in the street was by becoming a curbstone broker, a go-between, trusted by neither borrower nor lender, and earning a precarious livelihood by commissions. Even in that position he felt that he should labor under disadvantages, for he knew that his course had been universally condemned. It was a matter of every-day experience for him to meet old acquaintances who looked over him, or across the street, or in at shop-windows, to avoid recognition. And the half-patronizing, half-contemptuous nods he did receive were far worse to bear than downright cuts.

To a man out of employment, proscribed, marked, there is nothing so terrible as the impenetrability of the close ranks of society around him. Every busy man seems to have found his place; each locks step with his neighbor, and the vast procession moves on. Once out of the serried order, the unhappy wretch can never resume his position. He finds himself the fifth wheel of a coach; there is nothing for him to do,—no place for him at the bountiful board where others are fed. He may starve or drown himself, as he likes; the world has no use for him, and will not miss him. What Sandford felt, as he walked along the streets, may well be imagined. If he had not been supported by the indomitable courage and assurance of his sister, he would have sunk to the level of a pauper.

One day, as he was passing a church, his eye was caught by a placard at the door, inviting, in bold letters, "friend, stranger, or traveller to enter, if but for a few minutes." It was a "business-men's prayer-meeting." The novelty of the idea struck him; he was at leisure; he had no notes to pay; anybody might fail, for aught he cared. He went in, and, to his surprise, saw, among the worshippers, scores of his old friends, engaged in devotion. Like himself, they had, many of them, failed, and, after the loss of all temporal wealth, had turned their attention to the "more durable riches." He fell into a profound meditation, from which he did not recover until the meeting ended.

The next day he returned, and the day following, also,—taking a seat each time a little nearer the desk, until at last he reached the front row of benches, where he was to be seen at every service. It is not necessary to speculate upon his motives, or to conjecture how far he deceived himself in his professions,—if, indeed, there was any deception in the case. Let him have the benefit of whatever doubt there may be. The leading religious men hoped, without feeling any great confidence; the world, especially the business world, mocked and derided.

But piety, in itself, however heartfelt, does not clothe or feed its possessor, and Mr. Sandford, even with that priceless gift, must find some means of supplying his temporal wants. His new friends had plenty of advice for him, and some of them would have been glad to furnish him with employment; but none of them were so well satisfied with the sincerity of his conversion as to trust him far. It was not to be wondered, after his exploits on the day of his failure, that there should be a reasonable shyness on the part of those who had money which they could not afford or did not choose to give away. It was quite remarkable to see the change produced when the subject was introduced. Faces, that a few minutes before had shone with tearful joy or rapturous aspirations, full of brotherly affection, would suddenly cool, and contract, and grow severe, when Sandford broached the one topic that was nearest to him. He found that there was no way of escaping from the law of compensation by appropriating the results of other men's labors,—that religion (very much to his disappointment) gave him no warrant to live in idleness; therefore he was fain to do what he could for himself. He tried to act as a curb-stone broker, as an insurance agent, as an adjuster of marine losses and averages, as an itinerant solicitor for a life-insurance company, as an accountant, and in various other situations. All in vain. He was shunned like an escaped convict; the motley suit itself would hardly have added to his disgrace. No one put faith in him or gave him employment,—save in a few instances, for charity's sake. Few men can brave a city; and Sandford, certainly, was not the man to do it. The scowling, or suspicious, or contemptuous, pitying glances he encountered smote him as with fiery swords. He quailed; he cowered; he dropped his eyes; he acquired a stooping, shambling gait. The man who feels that he is looked down upon grows more diminutive in his own estimation, until he shrinks into the place which the world assigns him. So Sandford shrunk, until he crept through the streets where once he had walked erect, and earned a support as meagre and precarious as the more brazen-faced and ragged of the great family of mendicants, to which he was gravitating.

Mendicants,—an exceeding great army! They do not all knock at area-doors for old clothes and broken victual, nor hold out hats at street-crossings, nor expose sharp-faced babies to win pity, nor send their infant tatterdemalions to torture the ears of the wealthy with scratchy fiddles and wheezing accordions. No, these plagues of society are only the extreme left wing; the right wing is a very respectable class in the community. The party-leader who makes his name and influence serve him in obtaining loans which he never intends to pay,—shall we call him a beggar? It is an ugly word. The parasite who makes himself agreeable to dinner-givers, who calculates upon his accomplishments as a stock in trade, intending that his brains shall feed his stomach,—what is he, pray? It is ungracious to stigmatize such a jolly dog. The woman whose fingers are hooped with rings won in wagers which gallantry or folly could not decline, who is ready by philopaena, or even by more direct suggestions, to lay every beau or acquaintance under contribution,—is she a beggar, too? It is a long way, to be sure, from the girl with scanty and draggled petticoat and tangled hair, picking out lumps of coal from ash-heaps, or carrying home refuse from the tables of the rich,—a long way from that squalid object to the richly-cloaked, furred, bonneted, jewelled, flaunting lady, whose friends are all so kind.

But the most charitable must feel a certain degree of pity, if not of scorn, for those who, like Mr. and Miss Sandford, contrive to wear the outward semblance of respectability, boarding with fashionable people and wearing garments a la mode, while they have neither fortune nor visible occupation. Miss Sandford, to be sure, had a few pupils in music,—young friends, who, as she averred, "insisted upon practising with her, although she did not profess to give lessons," not she. Still her toilet was as elegant as ever. The first appearance of a new style of cloak, a new pattern of silk or embroidery, new ribbons, laces, jewelry, might be observed, as she took her morning promenade. The dealers in rich goods, elegant trifles, costly nothings, all knew her well. Whatever satisfied her artistic taste she purchased. To see was to desire, and, in some way, all she coveted tended by a magical attraction to her rooms. "Society" frowned upon her; she went to no receptions in the higher circles, but she had no lack of associates for all that. At concerts and other public assemblages, her brilliant figure and irreproachable costume were always to be seen,—the admiration of men, the envy of women. Nor was she without gallants. Gentlemen flocked about her, and seemed only too happy in her smiles; but it never happened that their wives or sisters joined in their attentions. On fine days, as she came out for a walk, she was sure to be accompanied by some person whose dress and manners marked him as belonging to the wealthy classes; and at such times it generally happened,—according to the scandal-loving shopkeepers,—that the last new book, the little "love" of a ring, or the engraved scent-bottle was purchased.

An odd affair is Society. At its outposts are flaming swords for women, though invisible to other eyes; men can venture without the lines, if they only return at roll-call. Let a woman receive or visit one of the demi-monde, (the technical use of the word is happily inapplicable here,) and she might as well earn her living by her own labor, or do any other disreputable thing; but her brother may pay court to the most doubtful, and mothers will only shake their heads and say, "He must sow his wild oats; he'll get over all that by-and-by."

So the beauty was still queen in her circle, and found admirers in plenty. Perhaps she even enjoyed the freedom; for, to a woman of spirit, the constraints of taboo must be irksome at times. Not the Brahmin, who fears to tread upon sole-leather from the sacred cow, and dares not even think of the flavor of her forbidden beef, who keeps himself haughtily aloof from the soldier and the trader, and walks sunward from the pariah, lest the polluting shadow fall on his holy person, has a more difficult and engrossing occupation than the woman of fashion, in a country where the distinctions of rank are so purely factitious as in ours. Miss Sandford's time was now her own; she was accountable to no supervisor. Her brother was a cipher. He did not venture to intrude upon her, except at seasons when she was at leisure, and in a humor to be bored by him. Perhaps she looked back regretfully, but, as far as could be told by her manner, she carried herself proudly, with the air of one who says,—

"Better reign in hell than serve in heaven."

The observant reader has doubtless wondered before this, that Mr. Sandford did not, in his emergency, apply to his old clerk, Fletcher, for the money in exchange for the peculiar obligation of which mention has been made. It is presuming too much upon Mr. Sandford's stupidity to suppose that the idea had not frequently occurred to him. But he was satisfied that Fletcher was one of the few who were making money in this time of general distress, and that with every day's acquisition the paper became more valuable; therefore, as it was his last trump, he preferred to play it when it would sweep the board; and he was willing to live in any way until the proper time came. Not so easy was Fletcher. Several times he attempted to pay the claim, so that he could once more hold his head erect as a free man. But Sandford smiled blandly; "he was in no hurry," he said; "Mr. Fletcher evidently had money, and was good for the amount." Poor Fletcher!—walking about with a rope around his neck,—a long rope now, and slack,—but held by a man who knows not what pity means!

CHAPTER XXV.

Greenleaf pursued his search for Alice with all the ardor of his nature. One glimpse only he had of her;—at a clothing-store, where he inquired, the clerk seemed to recognize the description given, and was quite sure that such a girl had taken out work, but he knew nothing of her whereabouts, and he believed she was now employed by another establishment. It was something to know that she was in the city, and, probably, not destitute; still better to know what path of life she had chosen, so that his time need not be wasted in fruitless inquiries. On his return, after the second day's search, he sought his friend Easelmann, whose counsel and sympathy he particularly desired.

"Any tidings of the fugitive?" was the first question.

"No," replied Greenleaf,—"nothing satisfactory. I have heard of her once; but it was like a trail in the woods, which the hunter comes upon, then loses utterly."

"But the hunter who measures a track once will be likely to find it again."

"Yes, I have that consolation. But, Easelmann, though this mishap of losing Alice has cost me many sleepless nights, and will continue to engross my time until I find her, I cannot rid myself of other troubles and apprehensions. I have done nothing for a long time. I have no orders; and, as I have no fortune to fall back upon, I see nothing but starvation before me."

"Then, my dear fellow, look the other way. It isn't wise to distress yourself by looking ahead, so long as you have the chance of turning round."

"I feel lonely, too,—isolated. People that I meet are civil enough; but I don't know a man, except in my profession, that I can consider a friend."

"Very likely. Caste isn't confined to India."

"I had supposed that intellect and culture were enough to secure for a man a recognition in good society; but I am made to feel, a hundred times a day, that I have no more status than a clever colored man, an itinerant actor, or any other anomaly. To-day I met Travis; you know he comes here and makes himself free and easy with us, and has always put himself on a footing of equality."

"Wherein you made a mistake. He has no right, but by courtesy, to any equality. A little taste, perhaps, and money enough to gratify it,—that's all. He never had an idea in his life."

"That is the reason I felt the slight. He was walking with a lady whose manner and dress were unmistakable,—a lady of undoubted position. I bowed, and received in return one of those hardly-perceptible nods, with a forced smile that covered only the side of his face from the lady. It was a recognition that one might throw to his boot-black. I am a mild-mannered man, as you know; but I could have murdered him on the spot."

Greenleaf walked the floor with flashing eyes and his teeth set.

"Now, I like the spirit," said Easelmann; "but, pray, be sensible. 'Where Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.' Stand firm in your own shoes, and graduate your bows by those you get."

"I suppose I am thin-skinned."

"As long as you are, you will chafe. Cultivate a hide like a rhinoceros's, and Society will let fly its pin-pointed arrows in vain. You have a great deal to learn, my dear boy."

"But other special classes are not so treated,—literary men, for instance."

"Don't be too sure of that. An author who has attained position is feted, because the fashionable circles must have their lions. But to stand permanently like other men, he must have money or family, or else obey the world's ten commandments, of which the first is, 'Thou shalt not wear a slouched hat,'—and the rest are like unto it. No,—the literary men have their heart-burnings, I suspect. They forget, as you do, that their very profession, the direction of their thoughts, their mode of life, cut them off from sympathy and fellowship. What has a writer who dreams of rivalling Emerson or the 'Autocrat' to do with costly and absorbing private theatricals, with dances at Papanti's, with any of the thousand modes of killing time agreeably? And how shall you become the new Claude, if you give your thoughts to the style of your clothes, and to the inanities that make up the staple of conversation?"

"But because I am precluded from devoting my time to society, that is no reason why I should bear the patronizing airs"——

"Don't be patronized,—that's all. If a man gives you such a look as you have described, cut him dead the next time you meet him. If anybody gives you two fingers to shake, give him only one of yours. I tried that plan on a doctor of divinity once, and it worked admirably. His intended condescension somehow vanished in a mist, and the foolish confusion that overspread his blank features would have done you good to behold."

"I have no doubt. I don't think it would be easy to be impertinent to you. Not that there are not presuming people enough; but you have a way with you. Your blade that cuts off a bayonet at a blow will glide through a feather as well."

"A delicate stroke of yours! Now to return. You are out of money, you say. Perhaps you will allow me to become your creditor for a while. I may presume upon the relation and take on some airs;—that's inevitable; one can't forego such a privilege;—but I promise to bow very civilly whenever I meet you; and I won't remind you of the debt—above twice a day."

Taking out his pocket-book, he handed his friend fifty dollars, and pshawed and poohed at every expression of gratitude.

"By the way, Greenleaf," he continued, "I have been in search of an absconding female also. You remember Mrs. Sandford, the charming widow?"

"Yes,—what has become of her?"

"You see how philosophical I am. I have not seen her yet; and yet I am not crazy about it. Some chickens think the sky is falling, whenever a rose-leaf drops on their heads."

"But you have no such reason to be anxious."

"Haven't I? Do you think old fellows like me have lost recollection as well as feeling? One of the most deadly cases of romance I ever knew was between people of forty and upwards."

"How dull I was! I saw some rather odd glances between you at the musical party, but thought nothing more about it. But why haven't you been looking for her?"

"I have been cogitating," said Easelmann, twisting his moustaches.

"I should think so. If you had asked me, now! I went with her to the house where I suppose she is still boarding."

"Did you?" [very indifferently, and with the falling inflection.]

"Why, don't you want to know?"

"Yes,—to-morrow. And I think, that, when we find her, we may find a clue to your Alice."

Greenleaf started up as if he had been galvanized.

"You have seen her, then! You old fox! Where is she? To-morrow, indeed! Tell me, and I will fly."

"You can't; for, as Brother Chadband observed, you haven't any wings."

"Don't trifle with me. I know your fondness for surprises; but if you love me, don't put me off with your nonsense."

Greenleaf was thoroughly in earnest, and Easelmann took a more soothing tone. At another time the temptation to tease would have been irresistible.

"Be calm, you man of gunpowder, steel, whalebone, and gutta-percha! I positively have nothing but guesses to give you. Besides, do you think you have nothing to do but rush into Alice's arms when you find her? Take some valerian to quiet your nerves, and go to bed. In the morning, try to smooth over those sharp features of yours. Use rouge, if you can't get up your natural color. When you are presentable, come over here again, and we'll stroll out in search of adventure. But mind, I promise nothing,—I only guess."

While he spoke, Greenleaf looked into the mirror, and was surprised to see how anxiety had worn upon him. His face was thin and bloodless, and his eyes sunken, but glowing. The quiet influence of his friend calmed him, and his impatience subsided. He took his leave silently, wringing Easelmann's hand, and walked home with a lighter heart.

"He is a good fellow," mused Easelmann, "and has suffered enough for his folly. The lesson will do him good."

CHAPTER XXVI.

Mr. Bullion was not without good natural impulses, but his education and experience had been such as to develop only the sharp and selfish traits of his character. An orphan at the age of eleven years, he was placed in a shop under the charge of a grasping, unscrupulous man, where he learned the rules of business which he followed afterwards with so much success. The old-fashioned notions about the Golden Rule he was speedily well rid of; for when his indiscreet frankness to customers was observed, the rod taught him the folly of untimely truth-telling, if not the propriety of smoothing the way to a bargain by a glib falsehood. With such training, he grew up an expert salesman; and before he was of age, after various changes in business, he became the confidential clerk in a large wholesale house. Owing to unexpected reverses, the house became embarrassed, and at length failed. The head of the firm went back to his native town a broken-hearted man, and not long afterwards died, leaving his family destitute. But Bullion, with a junior partner, settled with the creditors, kept on with the business, and prospered. Perhaps, if the widow had received what was rightfully hers, the juniors would have had a smaller capital to begin upon,—Bullion knew; but the account, if there was one, was past settlement by human tribunals, and had gone upon the docket in the great Court of Review.

Wealth grows like the banian, sending down branches that take root on all sides in the thrifty soil, and then become trunks themselves, and the parents of ever-increasing boughs,—a sturdy forest in breadth, a tree in unity. So Bullion grew and flourished. At the time of our story he was rich enough to satisfy any moderate ambition; but he wished to rear a colossal fortune, and the operations he was now concerned in were fortunate beyond his expectations. But he was not satisfied. He conceived the idea of carrying on the same stock-speculation in New York on a larger scale, and made an arrangement with one of the leading "bears" of that city; but he was careful to keep this a secret, most of all from Fletcher and others of his associates at home. Fortune favored him, as usual, and he promised himself a success that would make him a monarch in the financial world. Under the excitement of the moment, he had filled the baby hands of Fletcher's child with gold pieces. It was as Fletcher said; his head was fairly turned by the glittering prospect before him.

The associate in New York proposed to Bullion the purchase of a controlling interest in a railroad; and Bullion, believing that the depression had nearly reached its limit, and that affairs would soon take a turn, agreed that it was best now to change their policy, and to buy all the shares in this stock that should be offered while the price was low, and keep them as an investment. He felt sure that he with the New York capitalist had now money enough to "swing" all the shares in market, and they each agreed to purchase all that should be brought to the hammer in their respective cities. Following up his promise faithfully, Bullion bought all the stock of the railroad that came into State Street, and in this way rapidly exhausted his ready money. Then he raised loans upon his other property, and still kept the market clear. But he wondered that so many shares came to Boston for sale; for the railroad was in a Western State, and few of the original holders were New England men.

Bullion now met the first check in his career. Kerbstone, whose appeals for help he had disregarded, and whose property had been wofully depreciated by the course of the "bears," of whom Bullion was chief, failed for a large sum. As he was treasurer of the Neversink Mills, the stockholders and creditors of that corporation made an immediate investigation of its accounts. Kerbstone was found to be a defaulter to the amount of hundreds of thousands of dollars; the property was gone,—undermined like a snow-bank in spring. The largest owner was Bullion. He was overreached by his own shrewdness; and the hitherto unlucky "bulls," who had had small cause to laugh, thought that it was

"sport to see the engineer Hoist with his own petard,"—

better even than to have tossed him on their own horns.

Bullion made some wry faces; but the loss, though great, was not ruinous. He was obliged, however, to take back the shares of the factory-stock on which he had obtained loans for his New York operations, and to substitute an equal amount of other securities,—thus cramping his resources at a time when he needed every dollar to carry out his vast plans.

In the multiplicity of his affairs, Bullion had almost forgotten Fletcher, and left him to pursue his own course. But there was a man who had not forgotten him, and who followed all his movements with vigilant eyes. Sandford was convinced that Fletcher had in some way become prosperous, and he now advanced to use the peculiar note as a draft on the miserable debtor's funds. There was the same wily approach, the same covert allusion to Fletcher's supposed resources, the same peremptory demand, and the same ugly threat which had so desperately maddened him when the subject was broached before. Fletcher felt the tightening of the lasso, but could not free himself from the fatal noose. He must pay whatever the cold-eyed creditor demanded. Two thousand dollars was the sum asked for the acknowledgment of having appropriated five hundred. Twopence for halfpenny has been accounted fair usury among the Jews; but in Christian communities it is only crime that accumulates interest like that.

As a measure of precaution, Sandford had made a copy of the paper and prepared an explanatory statement; these he now inclosed in an envelope, in Fletcher's presence, and directed it to Messrs. Foggarty, Danforth, and Dot. Then drawing out his watch, as if to make a careful computation of time, he said,—

"Nine, ten, eleven,—yes,—at eleven, to-morrow, I shall expect to receive the sum; otherwise I shall feel it my duty to send this letter by a trusty hand. In fact, I suppose I have hardly done right in not putting the gentlemen on their guard before."

A cold sweat covered Fletcher's shivering limbs, and for a moment he stood irresolute; but recollecting Bullion, he rallied himself, and, assenting to the proposition, bade Sandford good-bye; then, as the only revenge practicable, he cursed him with the heartiest emphasis, when his back was turned. Presently Tonsor came with the news of Kerbstone's failure.

"The street is full of rumors," he said;—"Bullion is a large owner in the Neversink."

"Bosh!" said Fletcher,—"Bullion is in there for fifty thousand, to be sure; but what is that? He has other property enough,—half a million, at least."

"Still, a pebble brought down Goliath. A house in New York, worth a million, failed yesterday for want of twenty-five thousand."

"Don't you be alarmed. Bullion knows. He isn't going to fail."

"I want to get ten thousand from him to take some shares I bought for him."

"How soon?"

"Now; and he is not at his office."

"I'll get you the money from our house. I haven't deposited the funds for to-day yet, and I'll put in a memorandum which Bullion will make good."

"Hadn't you better wait?"

"No; it doesn't matter. He's all right; and it isn't best to break his orders for any ten thousand dollars."

Fletcher handed the money to the broker, and, as bank-hours were then about over, he put his papers in order and went home.

"Lovey!" he exclaimed, upon meeting his wife, "I have been thinking over what you said about getting my notes cashed. I believe I'll take Bullion's offer and salt the money down. Probably, now, he will give me a better trade, for there is considerable more due."

"Oh, John! how glad I am! You will do it to-morrow,—won't you, now?"

"Yes, I'll settle with him to-morrow."

He was thinking of the fact that Tonsor had bought shares for Bullion, and he wondered what the move meant. A house divided against itself could not stand; and he said to himself, that a man must be uncommonly deep to be a "bull" and a "bear" at the same time. There was no doubt that Bullion had embarked in some speculation which he had not seen fit to make known to his agent.

"There you go,—off into one of your fogs again!" said the wife, noticing his suddenly abstracted air. "That's the way you have done for the last three months,—ever since you began with that hateful man."

"I get to thinking about affairs, my little woman, and I don't want to bother your simple head with them; so I go cruising off in the fog, as you call it, by myself."

"Oh, if you once get through with that man's affairs, we'll have no more fogs!"

"No, deary, we'll have summer weather and a smooth sea, I hope, for the rest of our voyage."

"You see, John, I have been dreadfully anxious, more than I could tell you. If anything goes wrong, I've always noticed that it isn't the big people that have to suffer; it's the smaller ones that get caught."

"Yes, it's an old story; the big flies break out of the spider's net; the little chaps hang there. But I'll settle up the business to-morrow. I shall have enough to buy us a little house in the country,—a snug box, with a garden; then I'll get a horse to drive about with, and we'll take some comfort. Come, little woman, sit on my knee! Come, baby, here is a knee for you, too!"

Holding them in his arms, he still mused upon the morrow, and once and again charged his mind to remember "two thousand for Sandford, ten thousand for Danforth and Dot!"

CHAPTER XXVII.

Alice did not feel the utter loneliness of her situation, until, as she walked along, square after square, she encountered so many hundreds of abstracted or curious or impudent faces, and reflected that it was upon such people that her future support and comfort would depend. She tried to discover in some countenance the impress of kindly benevolence;—not that she proposed to risk so much as a question; but it was her first experience with the busy world, and she wished to observe its ways, when neither relationship nor personal interest was involved. Small encouragement she would have felt to approach any that she met. Men of middle-age walked by as in dreams, cold, unobservant, listless; the younger ones, fuller of life, strode on with high heads, and flinging glances that were harder to bear than stony indifference, even. Ladies clothed in costly furs scanned the pretty face under the mourning bonnet with prying eyes, or tossed her a hasty, scornful look. Shop-girls giggled and stared. Boys rushed by, rudely jostling every passenger. Old women in scanty petticoats that were fringed by no dressmaker, with pinched faces and watery eyes, looked imploringly and hobbled along, wrapping parcels of broken victual under their faded shawls.—A sorry world Alice thought it. In the country, she had been used to receive a kindly bow or a civil "Good-morning!" from every person she met; and the isolation of the individual in the city was to her something unnatural, even appalling.

She had cut out some boarding-house advertisements from the daily papers, and her first care was to find a home suited to her slender means. Reaching the door of the first on her list, she rang and was shown into a small drawing-room, shabby-genteel in its furniture and ornaments. Two seamstresses sat chattering around the centre-table; while a ruddy young man, with greenish brown moustaches and sandy hair, rested his clumsy boots on the fender, holding an open music-book in his lap and a flute in his ill-kept and gaudily-ringed hands. The kitchen, apparently, was not ventilated; and a mingled odor, beyond the analysis of chemistry, came up into the entry and pervaded the hot and confined atmosphere of the room. The landlady, a stout and resolute woman, entered with a studied smile, which changed gradually to a cold civility. Her eyes, unlike Banquo's, had a deal of speculation in them. One might read the price-current in the busy wrinkles. Around her pursed-up mouth lurked the knowledge of the number of available slices in a sirloin,—the judgment of the lump of butter that should leave no margin for prodigality. Warfare with market-men, shrewish watchfulness over servants, economy scarcely removed from meanness at the table, all were clearly indicated in her flushed and hard-featured face.

Alice was not familiar with such people; but she shrank from her by instinct, as the first chicken fled from the first hawk. The landlady, on her part, was equally suspicious, and, finding that Alice had no relatives to depend upon, and that she expected to earn her own living, was not at all solicitous to increase the number of her boarders.

"It's pootty hard to tell who's who, now-a-days," she said. "I have to pay cash for all I set on the table, and I can't trust to fair promises. Perhaps, though, you've got some cousin that looks arter your bills?"

The flute-player exchanged knowing glances with the seamstresses.

All-unconscious of the taunt, Alice simply replied,—

"No, I have told you that I have no one to depend upon."

The landlady's mouth was primly set, and she merely exclaimed,—

"Oh! indeed!"

"I think I'll look further," said Alice. "Good-morning."

"Good-morning."

Half-suppressed chuckles followed her, as she left the room. Sorely grieved and indignant, she took her way to another house. Fortune this time favored her. The landlady, a kind-hearted woman, was in mourning for her only daughter, and with the first words she heard she felt her heart drawn to the lovely and soft-voiced stranger. Without any offensive inquiries, Alice was at once received, and an upper room assigned to her. After sending for her trunk, she dressed for dinner.

The table presented specimens of all the familiar characters of boarding-house life. There was the lawyer, sharp, observant, talkative, ready for a joke or an argument. There was the solemn man of business, who ate from a sense of duty, and scowled at the lawyer's bad puns. Near him, with an absurdly youthful wig and opaque goggles, sat the Unknown; his name, occupation, resources, and tastes alike a profound mystery. Several dapper clerks, whose right ears drooped from having been used as pen-racks, wearing stunning cravats, outre brooches and shirt-studs, learned in the lore of "two-forty" driving, were ranged opposite. Then there was the jolly widow, who was the admiration of men of her own age, but who cruelly gave all her smiles to the boys with newly-sprouting chins. Near her sat the fastidious man, whose nostrils curled ominously when any stain appeared on his napkin, or when anything sullied the virgin purity of his own exclusive fork. His spectacles seemed to serve as microscopes, made for the sole purpose of detecting some fatal speck invisible to other eyes. There was the singer, with a neck like a swan's, bowing with the gracious air that is acquired in the acknowledgment of bouquets and bravas. The artist was her vis-a-vis, powerful like Samson in his bushy locks, negligent with fore-thought, wearing a massive seal-ring, and fragrant with the perfume of countless pipes. The nice old maid near him turns away in disgust when she sees his moustaches draggle in the soup.

Down the long row of faces Alice looked timidly, and at length fastened her eyes upon a lady in mourning like herself. There is no physiognomist like the frank, affectionate young man or woman who looks to find appreciation and sympathy. It is not necessary, for such a purpose, to speculate upon Grecian or Roman noses, thin or protruding lips, blue, gray, or brown eyes; each soul knows its own sphere and the people that belong in it; and a sure instinct or prescience guides us in our choice of friends. Alice at a glance became conscious of an affinity, and quietly waited till circumstances should bring her into associations with the woman whom she hoped to make a friend.

It was not long before the occasion came. Not to make any mystery, it was our old acquaintance, Mrs. Sandford, who attracted the gaze of Alice, and who soon became her kindly adviser. Never was there a more motherly woman; and, as she was now almost a stranger in the house, she attached herself to Alice with a warmth and an unobtrusive solicitude that quite won the girl's heart. Alice lost no time in procuring such work from a tailor as she felt competent to do, and applied herself diligently to her task; but a very short trial convinced her, that, at the "starvation prices" then paid for needlework, she should not be able to earn even her board. Then came in the thoughtful friend, who, after gently drawing out the facts of the case, furnished her with sewing on which she could display her taste and skill. Day after day new employment came through the same kind hands, until Alice wondered how one wearer could want such a quantity of the various nameless, tasteful articles in which all women feel so much pride. It was not until long after, that she learned how the work had been procured by her friend's active, but noiseless agency.

Not many days after their intimacy commenced, as Mrs. Sandford sat watching Alice at her work, it occurred to her that there was a look of tender sorrow, an unexplained melancholy, which her recent bereavement did not wholly account for. Not that the girl was given to romantic sighs or tragic starts, or that she carried a miniature for lachrymose exercises; but it was evident that she had what we term "a history." She was frank and cheerful, although there was palpably something kept back, and her cheerfulness was like the mournful beauty of flowers that blossom over graves. No sympathetic nature could refuse confidence to Mrs. Sandford, and it was not long before she discovered that Alice had passed through the golden gate to which all footsteps tend, and from which no one comes back except with a change that colors all the after life.

"And so you are in love, poor child!" said Mrs. Sandford, compassionately.

"I have been" (with a gentle emphasis).

"Ah, you think you are past it now, I suppose?"

"I sha'n't forget soon,—I could not, if I would; but love is over,—gone like yesterday's sunshine."

"But the sun shines again to-day."

"Well, if you prefer another comparison," said Alice, smiling faintly,—"gone out like yesterday's fire."

"Fire lurks a long time in the ashes unseen, my dear."

Alice dropped her needle and looked steadily at her companion.

"I am young," she said; "yet I have outgrown the school-girl period. The current of my life has flowed in a deep channel: the shallow little brook may fancy its first spring-freshet to be a Niagara; but my feelings have swelled with no transient overflow. I gave my utmost love and devotion to a man I thought worthy. He treated me with neglect, and at last falsified his word in offering his hand to another, I do not hate him. I have none of that alchemy which changes despised love to gall. But I could never forgive him, nor trust him again. And if he, who seemed always so frank, so earnest, so tender, so single in his aims,—if he could not be trusted, I do not know where I could rest my heart and say,—'Here I am safe, whatever betide!'"

It was a strange thing for Alice to speak in such an exalted strain, and she trembled as she tried to resume her sewing. The thread slipped and knotted; the needle broke and pricked her finger; and then, feeling her cheeks begin to glow, she laid down her work and turned to the window.

"Don't lose all faith, Alice; there are true hearts in the world. Perhaps this lover of yours, now, has repented and is striving to find you. Or you may have been misinformed as to the extent of his treachery. To take your own simile, you don't accuse the brook of fickleness merely because it eddies around under some flowery bank; after it has made the circle, it keeps on its steady course."

Alice only shook her head, still keeping her face averted to conceal the tremor of her lips.

"But you haven't told me who this man is. How odd it would be, if I knew him!"

"I would rather not have you know. The secret isn't a fatal one, to be sure; but I prefer to keep it."

Suddenly she stepped back from the window, ashy pale, and gasping hysterically. Mrs. Sandford rose hastily to assist her, and, as she did so, noticed her old acquaintance, Mr. Greenleaf, on the opposite sidewalk. She helped Alice to her seat and brought her a glass of water, and, as she did so, in an instant the long track of the past was illumined as by a flash of lightning. She saw the reason for Greenleaf's conduct towards her sister-in-law, Marcia. She remembered his early fascination, his long, vacillating resistance, his brief engagement, and the stormy scene when it was broken. She had seen the thread of Fate spun for each, without knowing that invisible strands connected them. She had begun to read a tale of sorrow, but the page was torn, and now she had finished it upon the chance-found fragment; the irregular and jagged edges fitted together like mosaic-work.

What a mystery is Truth! A Lie may simulate its form or hue, and, taken by itself, may deceive the most acute observer. But in the affairs of the world, every fact is related; it meets and is joined by other facts on every side,—the whole forming an harmonious figure in all its angles and curves as well as in its gradations of color. Each truth slips easily into its predestined place; a lie, however trivial, has no place; its angles are belligerent, its colors false; it makes confusion, and is thrown out as soon as the eye of the Master falls upon it.

Alice revived.

"Did I speak?" she asked.

"No,—you said nothing."

"I am glad. I feared I had been foolish. It was a mere passing faintness."

Mrs. Sandford thought it was the cause of the faintness that was passing, but she prudently kept her discovery to herself.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Fletcher rose next morning betimes, after a night of fitful and unrefreshing slumber. In his dreams he had sought Bullion in vain; that substantial person seemed to have become a new Proteus, and to escape, when nearly overtaken, by taking refuge in some unexpected transformation. Sometimes the scene changed, and it was the dreamer that was flying, while Sandford, shod with swiftness, pursued him, swinging a lasso; and as often as the fierce hunter whirled the deadly coil, Fletcher awoke with a suffocating sensation, and a cold sweat trickling from his forehead. At breakfast, his wife noticed with intense anxiety his sharpened features and his evident preoccupation of mind. He hurried off, snatching a kiss from the baby and from the mother who held it, and walked towards Bullion's office. He knew Bullion was an early riser, and he felt sure of being able to see him before the usual hour of commencing business. But the office was not even opened; and, looking through the glass door, he saw that there was no fire in the grate. What was the meaning of this? Going into the street, he met Tonsor near the post-office. At the first sight of the broker's face, Fletcher's heart seemed to stop beating.

"Good-morning, Fletcher. Bad business, this! I suppose you've heard. Bullion went to protest yesterday. Hope you got wind of it in time, and made all safe."

"Bullion failed!" exclaimed Fletcher, through his chattering teeth. "Then I'm a ruined man!"

But a sudden thought struck him, and he asked eagerly,—

"But the money,—haven't you got it still?"

"No,—paid it over yesterday."

"Well, the shares, then?"

"No,—sorry to say, Bullion's clerk came for them not ten minutes before I heard of the protest."

"O God!" groaned the unhappy man, "there is no hope! But you, Mr. Tonsor, you are my friend; help me out of this! You can raise the money."

"Ten thousand dollars! It's a pretty large sum. I'm afraid I couldn't get it."

"Try, my friend,—you shall never regret it."

Tonsor hesitated, and Fletcher's spirits rose. He watched the broker's composed face with eyes that might pierce a mummy.

"What is the collateral?" asked Tonsor, slowly raising his wrinkled eyelids.

"Bullion's notes for seventeen thousand dollars."

"And Bullion gone to protest."

"He'll come up again."

"Perhaps; but while he is down, I can't do anything with his paper. The truth is, Fletcher, you ought not to have advanced the money for him. Remember, I warned you when you were about to do it."

Fletcher did not look as though he found the "Balm of I-told-you-so" very consoling.

Tonsor continued,—

"Now, if I were in your place, I would go and make a clean breast of it to Danforth. It was wrong, though I know you didn't mean any harm. He may be angry, but he won't touch you. You can't raise ten thousand dollars in these times,—not to save your soul."

"Keep your advice, and your money, too," said Fletcher, in sullen despair. "I ask for bread, and you give me a stone. Your moral lecture won't pay my debts."

He turned away abruptly and went again to Bullion's office. It was still closed. Determined at all hazards to see the man for whom he had risked so much, he went to his house on Beacon Hill. The servant said Mr. Bullion was not at home. Fletcher did not believe it, but the door was closed in his face before he could send a more urgent message, and with a sinking heart he retraced his steps towards State Street.

The horror of his position was now fully before him. He could not conceal his defalcation, and there was no longer a shadow of hope of replacing the money. Many a time he had taken the risk of lending large sums to brokers and others; but who would trust him, a man without estate, in a time like this? In his terrible anxiety about the new obligation, he had forgotten the old, until he chanced to observe Sandford on the opposite sidewalk, strolling leisurely towards the business quarter of the town. The ex-secretary made a barely-perceptible bow, and, drawing out his watch, significantly turned the face towards his debtor. It was enough; there was no need of words. It was a little after ten o'clock; the fatal letter would be delivered at eleven! Fletcher crossed the street and accosted Sandford, though not without trepidation; for he shuddered like a swimmer within reach of a shark, as he encountered those cold and pitiless eyes.