The entire ownership of women is nowhere more fully assumed by their husbands than it is in Utah. A woman is obliged to submit to every exaction from him, to grant every request, obey every demand. In return, she need expect nothing, not even support. "You are mine, body and soul, but you have no right to claim anything from me more than what I choose to give you," is the attitude of every man in polygamy towards his wives. A "blessed" system, surely! It is no wonder that Brigham talks about the women's "rounding up their shoulders" to bear it, and one certainly fails to feel the surprise which "Jeddy" probably imagined he would arouse when he announced that the "mothers in Israel," unhappy and desolate, would break "the cable of the church" asunder if they could. This fanatical follower of Brigham Young never spoke a truer word in his life, whether he spake by inspiration or not. There was not a woman, then, who would not have broken her chains if she could, let the whole Mormon Church call these fetters what they might, and there is not a woman among them to-day who would not slip her fetters if she knew how. It is all very well for the Mormon leaders and their sympathizers in the Gentile world to say that the women are contented, and even happy, in polygamy; the one knows he speaks what is not true ; the other tells the tale as it is told to him, refusing to use his eyes, his ears, or his common sense.

. . .

I learned the misery of even a monogamic marriage under polygamic laws; and, though I never expressed myself so openly on the subject, I yet felt an intense sympathy with a friend of mine, who, when told that her husband thought of taking another wife, replied, with the fire flashing from her black eyes, "If he does, I'll kill him!" It is not at all likely she would have kept her word ; she would probably have settled down, as so many women like her have done, into a sullen sort of rebellion, which is not easy to subdue ; but she has never been tried; her husband seems as indifferent to the charms of the marriageable young ladies about her as she could desire: yet she never feels entirely safe. How can she, when she knows her husband is constantly admonished that he is not "living up to his privileges." The sword above her head is suspended by a hair; it is a miracle if it does not fall at last. I know every pang of anxiety, every heart-throb of sick expectation, for I had that selfsame torture for two years, without a moment's cessation. I do not know how I bore it; but I suppose I was only being schooled for what came afterwards.

. . .

I had felt its misery; I had known the abject wretchedness of the condition to which it reduced women, but I did not fully realize the extent of its depravity, the depths of the woes in which it plunged women, until I saw the contrasted lives of monogamic wives.

I had seen women neglected, or, worse than that, cruelly wronged, every attribute of womanhood outraged and insulted. I now saw other women, holding the same relation, cared for tenderly, cherished, protected, loved, and honored. I had been taught to believe that my sex was inferior to the other; that the curse pronounced upon the race in the Garden of Eden was woman's curse alone, and that it was to man that she must look for salvation. No road lay open for her- to the throne of grace; no gate of eternal life swinging wide to the knockings of her weary hands; no loving Father listened to the wails of sorrow and supplication wrung by a worse than death-agony from her broken heart. Heaven was inaccessible to her, except as she might win it through some man's will. I found, to my surprise, that woman was made the companion and not the subject of man. She was the sharer alike of his joys and his sorrows. Morally, she was a free agent. Her husband's God was her God as well, and she could seek Him for herself, asking no mortal intercession. Motherhood took on a new sacredness, and the fatherly care and tenderness, brooding over a family, strengthening and defending it, seemed sadly sweet to me, used as I was to see children ignored by their fathers.

Seeing this, I began to comprehend a little why it was so difficult to make the state of affairs in Utah understood. The contrast was so very great that, unless it was seen, it could not be realized, even ever so faintly. I feel sometimes, both in speaking to audiences, and in private conversations, the thrill of shocked surprise which runs through my listeners' veins as I relate some particular atrocity, or narrate some fearful wrong, which has been suffered either by myself or some person known to me; but even then I know the enormity of the system which permits such things to be possible is but vaguely understood.

I am accused sometimes of exaggeration. In reply to that accusation I would say, that is simply impossible, I could not exaggerate, since language is inadequate to even half unveil the horrors. There are events of daily occurrence which decency and womanly modesty forbid my even hinting at. No one can, even if they would, quite tear the covering away from the foul, loathsome object, called "Celestial Marriage," reeking as it is with filth and moral poison; rotten to the very core; a leprous spot on the body politic; a defilement to our fair fame as a nation. I am compelled to silence on points that would make what I have already said seem tame in comparison. Not a word of all my story is exaggerated or embellished. The diflficulty has been rather to suppress and tone down.

Women are the greatest sufferers. The moral natures of the men must necessarily suffer also; but to them comes no such agony of soul as comes to women. Their sensibilities are blunted; their spiritual natures deadened; their animal natures quickened; they lose manliness, and descend to the level of brutes; and these dull-witted, intellectually-dwarfed moral corpses, the women are told, are their only saviours.

. . .

Rich or poor alike suffer. Polygamy bears no more lightly on the one than the other. If they are poor, they have to work for themselves and their children, suffer every deprivation, submit to every indignity. If they are in more affluent circumstances, they have more time for brooding over their sorrows, more leisure for the exercise of the natural jealousy which they cannot help feeling for the other wives. Happiness and contentment are utterly unknown to Mormon women; they are impossible conditions, either to dwellers in poverty or plenty.