One of our callers was Captain Hooper, the Utah delegate to Congress. He is an adept at the Western plan of getting out of a fix by telling you a story. When we laughingly alluded to his lack of wives, and the absurdity of a monogamist representing Utah, he said that the people at Washington all believed that Utah had sent them a polygamist. There is a rule that no one with the entry shall take more than one lady to the White House receptions. A member of Congress was urged by three ladies to take them with him. He, as men do, said, “The thing is impossible”--and did it. Presenting himself with the bevy at the door, the usher stopped him: “Can‘t pass; only one friend admitted with each member.” “Suppose, sir, that I‘m the delegate from Utah Territory?” said the Congressman. “Oh, pass in, sir--pass in,” was the instant answer of the usher. The story reminds me of poor Browne‘s “family” ticket to his lecture at Salt Lake City: “Admit the bearer and _one_ wife.” Hooper is said to be under pressure at this moment on the question of polygamy, for he is a favorite with the prophet, who cannot, however, with consistency promote him to office in the church on account of a saying of his own: “A man with one wife is of less account before God than a man with no wives at all.” Our best opportunity of judging of the Mormon ladies was at the theater, which we attended regularly, sitting now in Elder Stenhouse‘s “family” seats, now with General Wells. Here we saw all the wives of the leading churchmen of the city; in their houses, we saw only those they chose to show us: in no case but that of the Clawson family did we meet in society all the wives. We noticed at once that the leading ladies were all alike--full of taste, full of sense, but full, at the same time, of a kind of unconscious melancholy. Everywhere, as you looked round the house, you met the sad eye which I had seen but once before--among the Shakers at New Lebanon. The women here, knowing no other state, seem to think themselves as happy as the day is long: their eye alone is there to show the Gentile that they are, if the expression may be allowed, unhappy without knowing it. That these Mormon women love their religion and reverence its priests is but a consequence of its being “their religion”--the system in the midst of which they have been brought up. Which of us is there who does not set up some idol in his heart round which he weaves all that he has of poetry and devotion in his character? Art, hero-worship, patriotism are forms of this great tendency. That the Mormon girls, who are educated as highly as those of any country in the world--who, like all American girls, are allowed to wander where they please--who are certain of protection in any of the fifty Gentile houses in the city, and absolutely safe in Camp Douglas at the distance of two miles from the city-wall--all consent deliberately to enter on polygamy--shows clearly enough that they can, as a rule, have no dislike