"Well, judge, you must have seen a good deal of the 'peculiar institution.' What are its practical workings?" "Bad, and only bad--every way. It tends to make the men petty despots and mere animals, of course, while it degrades American women to the level of the Oriental harem. Their husbands, so-called, already habitually think and speak of them, as their 'women'--not _wives_--as you may have noticed, as a part of their goodly possessions, somewhat more esteemed perhaps than their flocks and herds, but not so much more either. Affection, sympathy, confidence--the finer instincts and feelings--all true delicacy between husband and wife--are fast dying out, and we have nothing half so good to show for them. Sometimes, however, a first wife gets the bit into her teeth, and then the others have to stand around, or leave. _Per contra_, sometimes the first wife herself gets ejected. One of Heber Kimball's sons married a second wife some time ago, and soon after she persuaded his first wife--a wife of many years, with several children--to vacate, by three shots from a revolver, and then installed herself as _first_ wife instead! No doubt, the Saints have many a little "unpleasantness," like this, to mar their domestic felicity; but they hush them up, and keep quiet about it." "What about their polygamous children?" "Why, they are inferior of course, in many ways, _ex necessitate_, as the fruits of such a practice always are, and must be. Go to the City Cemetery, and you will find it a perfect Golgotha of infant graves. If not feeble and tainted already in constitution, they must speedily become so; or else all History is false, and Science a slander." "And yet those we have seen on the road, and about the streets here, seem bright and spry enough."