As I stood among these simple people, so earnest in making their experiment in religion and social life, and remembered all the persecutions they had suffered and all they had accomplished in that desolate, far-off region, where they had, indeed, made “the wilderness blossom like the rose,” I appreciated, as never before, the danger of intermeddling with the religious ideas of any people.  Their faith finds abundant authority in the Bible, in the example of God’s chosen people.  When learned ecclesiastics teach the people that they can safely take that book as the guide of their lives, they must expect them to follow the letter and the specific teachings that lie on the surface.  The ordinary mind does not generalize nor see that the same principles of conduct will not do for all periods and latitudes.  When women understand that governments and religions are human inventions; that Bibles, prayerbooks, catechisms, and encyclical letters are all emanations from the brain of man, they will no longer be oppressed by the injunctions that come to them with the divine authority of “Thus saith the Lord.”

That thoroughly democratic gathering in the Tabernacle impressed me more than any other Fourth of July celebration I ever attended.  As most of the Mormon families keep no servants, mothers must take their children wherever they go—­to churches, theatres, concerts, and military reviews—­everywhere and anywhere.  Hence the low, pensive wail of the individual baby, combining in large numbers, becomes a deep monotone, like the waves of the sea, a sort of violoncello accompaniment to all their holiday performances.  It was rather trying to me at first to have my glowing periods punctuated with a rhythmic wail from all sides of the hall; but as soon as I saw that it did not distract my hearers, I simply raised my voice, and, with a little added vehemence, fairly rivaled the babies.  Commenting on this trial, to one of the theatrical performers, he replied:  “It is bad enough for you, but alas! imagine me in a tender death scene, when the most profound stillness is indispensable, having my last gasp, my farewell message to loved ones, accentuated with the joyful crowings or impatient complainings of fifty babies.”  I noticed in the Tabernacle that the miseries of the infantile host were in a measure mitigated by constant draughts of cold water, borne around in buckets by four old men.

The question of the most profound interest to us at that time, in the Mormon experiment, was the exercise of the suffrage by women.  Emeline B. Wells, wife of the Mayor of the city, writing to a Washington convention, in 1894, said of the many complications growing out of various bills before Congress to rob women of this right: