Around the World in Eighty Days. Junior Deluxe EditionVerne, Jules
General
Around the World in Eighty Days. Junior Deluxe Edition
Verne, Jules
Adventure stories; Voyages around the world -- Fiction
Several of the audience, not being much interested in the
missionary's narrative, here left the car; but Elder Hitch,
continuing his lecture, related how Smith, Jr., with his father,
two brothers, and a few disciples, founded the church of the
"Latter Day Saints," which, adopted not only in America, but in
England, Norway and Sweden and Germany, counts many artisans, as
well as men engaged in the liberal professions, among its
members; how a colony was established in Ohio, a temple erected
there at a cost of two hundred thousand dollars, and a town built
at Kirkland; how Smith became an enterprising banker, and
received from a simple mummy showman a papyrus scroll written by
Abraham and several famous Egyptians.
The Elder's story became somewhat wearisome, and his audience
grew gradually less, until it was reduced to twenty passengers.
But this did not disconcert the enthusiast, who proceeded with
the story of Joseph Smith's bankruptcy in 1837, and how his
ruined creditors gave him a coat of tar and feathers; his
reappearance some years afterwards, more honorable and honored
than ever, at Independence, Missouri, the chief of a flourishing
colony of three thousand disciples, and his pursuit thence by
outraged Gentiles, and retirement in the Far West.
Ten hearers only were now left, among them honest Passepartout,
who was listening with all ears. Thus he learned that, after long
persecutions, Smith reappeared in Illinois, and in 1839 founded a
community at Nauvoo, on the Mississippi, numbering twenty-five
thousand souls, of which he became mayor, chief justice and
general-in-chief; that he announced himself, in 1843, as a
candidate for the Presidency of the United States; and that
finally, being drawn into ambush at Carthage, he was thrown into
prison, and assassinated by a band of men disguised in masks.
Passepartout was now the only person left in the car. The Elder,
looking him full in the face, reminded him that, two years after
the assassination of Joseph Smith, the inspired prophet, Brigham
Young, his successor, left Nauvoo for the banks of the Great Salt
Lake, where, in the midst of that fertile region, directly on the
route of the emigrants who crossed Utah on their way to
California, the new colony, thanks to the polygamy practised by
the Mormons, had flourished beyond expectations.
"And this," added Elder William Hitch, "is why the jealousy of
Congress has been aroused against us! Why have the soldiers of
the Union invaded the soil of Utah? Why has Brigham Young, our
chief, been imprisoned, in contempt of all justice? Shall we
yield to force? Never! Driven from Vermont, driven from
Illinois, driven from Ohio, driven from Missouri, driven from
Utah, we shall yet find some independent territory on which to
plant our tents. And you, my brother," continued the Elder,
fixing his angry eyes upon his single hearer, "will you not plant
yours there, too, under the shadow of our flag?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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