One of the most monstrous results of the practice is the indifference with which an incestuous connection is tolerated.  The cohabitation, with the same man, of a mother, and her daughter by a previous marriage, is not unfrequent; and there are other instances even more disgusting.  One or two of them will exemplify the character of the whole.  One George D. Watt, an Englishman, residing at Salt Lake City, has for his fourth wife his own half-sister, who had been previously divorced from Brigham Young; and one Aaron Johnson, the Bishop of the town of Springville, on Lake Utah, has seven wives, four of whom are sisters, and his own nieces.  Young himself has declared in print, that he looks forward to the time when his son by one wife shall marry his daughter by another.  Marriages also are effected with girls who are mere children.  Accustomed from their cradles to sights and sounds calculated to impart precocious development, they mature rapidly, and few of them remain single after attaining the age of sixteen.  They look around for husbands, and understand, that, if they marry young men and become first wives, in course of time other wives will be associated with them; and they conclude, therefore, that it is as well for themselves to unite with some Bishop or High-Priest, with perhaps half-a-dozen wives already, who is able to feed his family well and clothe them decently; so they plunge into polygamy at once.  Another result of the practice is universal obscenity of language among both sexes.  The published sermons of the Mormon leaders are utterly vile in this respect, although they are somewhat expurgated before being printed.  They consider no language profane from which the name of the Deity is exempted.

There is, unquestionably, much unhappiness in families where polygamy prevails,—­daily bickering, jealousies, and heart-burnings,—­but it is carefully concealed from the knowledge of the public.  If domestic troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually had to Brigham Young for a divorce.  There are women in Salt Lake City who have been married and divorced half-a-dozen times within a year.  The first wife maintains a supremacy over all the others.  On the occasion of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of “sealing” is afterwards administered by Young.  By the civil process, in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband “for time,” and by the ecclesiastical solemnization “for eternity.”  Every wife taken after the first is called a “spiritual,” and is “sealed” ecclesiastically only, not civilly.  It follows, as a legitimate consequence, that the first wife of one man “for time” may be the “spiritual” wife of another man “for eternity.”  The power of sealing and unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies.  The ceremony is performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham’s square, which is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches.  In every instance of divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate of the fact, for which a fee of ten or eleven dollars is exacted.  When a polygamist dies, it becomes the duty of his “next friend” to care for his wives.  Thus, when Young became the President of the Church, he succeeded to all the widows of Joseph Smith.