Miss Dividends: A NovelGunter, Archibald Clavering
General
Miss Dividends: A Novel
Gunter, Archibald Clavering
Latter Day Saints -- Fiction
After a time the Livingstons get to their carriage and drive up to Camp
Douglas, to the dress parade which takes place every Sunday, having been
invited there by Captain Ellison, of the Thirteenth Infantry, who has
been introduced to Louise the evening before, and has been very much
caught by her piquant graces. Then, the parade being dismissed, this
gentleman brings up several of his brother officers to the Livingstons'
carriage, and introduces Lamar, a dandy, dashing lieutenant fresh from
West Point, and Johnson, of the Fifth Cavalry, and several other of his
brother officers, and these, looking for the first time upon the New
York beauties as they sit in their carriage, offer them a hundred
pleasant excursions and courtesies; all insisting that the whole party
must come to Mr. Bussey's ball, as it will be a great affair in Salt
Lake society, both Mormon and Gentile; for the banker aims for
popularity, and has invited every one in the city who has a bank account
or has any chance of having one.
Then they drive away, and looking at the stars and stripes which float
from the flag-staff of this camp bristling with cannon and Gatling
guns--for Douglas, in those days, was held rather in the manner of a
beleaguered fortress than in the easy method of a local garrison--the
girl cannot help contrasting the columns of blue infantry she has just
seen, and the vast and motley assemblage of men in the Tabernacle, who,
at the word of their president, would turn upon and assault this camp
and make war upon these United States of America. For the danger of
Mormonism has been and will be, not in the feeling of animosity that its
masses hold to this government, for they have but little, but in their
blind, unthinking allegiance to a power they hold superior to it--that
of their priesthood and the officers of their Church.
Then they come down the hill into the city again for supper at the
Townsend House, which takes place in the evening, dinner in that
primitive country being the midday meal. Finishing this, they are called
upon by Mrs. Bussey, who insists upon their not omitting her ball.
During her visit she introduces to the Livingstons a number of Gentile
ladies in the hotel and a few of the gentlemen engaged in speculation in
the neighboring mines, who are quartered at the house, and they pass a
quiet evening in the parlor, in conversation with their new-made
acquaintances, whom Miss Travenion charms with a song or two.
These are mostly plaintive melodies, for thoughts of her father will run
in the girl's brain and somehow make her sad. Being full of the subject
now, she questions the mining operators that she meets if they know
Ralph Travenion, and receives the usual answer that they have never
heard of him; and her anxiety for tidings of him increases and would now
be desperate, did not a few words she catches from one mining operator
to another set her thinking of the man who has gone to Tintic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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