As regards material prosperity Salt Lake City was already, when I saw it, a triumph, and in all the Community, if what men said was true, no man was more prosperous than Brigham Young. One gentile—a very moderate man—told us that the Prophet had entered upon speculations of every sort. If they succeeded they belonged to him, if they failed to the Church, an easy and profitable way of doing business. If he did not have every comfort that his heart could desire it was his own fault. He lived in what to him, I suppose, was a sort of luxury in the Beehive House, his wives in the larger Eagle House—and the two were joined by a low building in which were his offices. His Court consisted of a dentist in ordinary—doctors he could not abide. The last time that I saw this wonderful man, who certainly must be reckoned as one of the most striking apparitions of his century, was at the theatre, of which, as I have said, he was an assiduous patron—indeed it was reported that he himself was fond in his lighter moods of taking part in theatricals. That he lived not a few tragedies is certain, but it is difficult to think of that grim man in sock or buskin, or even to believe that he could have any “lighter moods.” The grand tier was filled with the wives of the much-wedded Saints; but where were the lovely ladies over whose charms Messrs. Cannon and Knapp have wasted so much printer’s ink? There must have been two or three hundred women present, all of them apparently recruited from the slums of London and Liverpool, Scandinavia, and, as we were told in the case of a few, from Germany. The harems of the Mormons were no temptation to the Gentile. The next morning we left Salt Lake City. There is in Messrs. Cannon and Knapp’s book a photograph of the town as it is to-day. The picturesqueness which struck me so much appears to have been largely improved off the face of the earth. Instead of the lowly but comfortable houses standing in their own gardens the streets are bordered by huge many-storied buildings scraping the sky—those monstrosities of which America is so proud. It seems a sorry thing that the old patriarchal simplicity of the place which made its beauty should have been ruthlessly torn down by the almighty dollar. I left Zion the richer in that I had had a personal interview with a prophet and hobnobbed with a Destroying Angel. NEVADA AND CALIFORNIA Further and further west! Forbes and I were bound to see Virginia City in Nevada, where the colossal mining industries were turning out fortunes. John Mackay, the Silver King, a right good fellow with whom I kept up a friendship for many years, was the head of the firm of Mackay, Fair, Flood and O’Brien, a group of Irishmen, and they were the kings of the place. Forbes knew them well, so we were sure of a good reception.