He confessed with some delicacy of language and words of bitter regret that there had been of late some cases in Nauvoo such as were common enough, alas! in Gentile society, but whose occurrence among the Saints had caused excitement.  Joseph Smith paced Susannah’s room; his harassment and distress on behalf of his people were either deeply felt or well feigned, and Susannah had no doubt that his feeling was true, that phase of him being for the time uppermost.  When he came to sit down beside her again, it was to sketch the misery to men and women and children which existed in Gentile society from this evil, which he affirmed to run riot through the warp and woof of so-called orthodox communities.

Her ignorance of the world was so great that she assumed this accusation to be of the same stuff as the anathemas he constantly cast against the integrity of the orthodox clergy.  The point that she grasped was that he believed the thing that he said.  She had at first assumed that should he propose to institute polygamy she would know then, once for all, that he was a villain; but now this test deserted her.  He was meditating this step, and it seemed that his arguments, if the facts on which he based them were admitted, had some value.

“There’s that for one thing, Sister Susannah,” Smith went on in a broken voice; “it has been a mean sort of thing to have to tell you, but it had to be said, and now there’s another thing to be considered.  Among the Gentiles who is it that has the most children?  Is it your man that’s high up in the ranks of society, who has money enough to give them a good education, to feed and clothe ’em? or is it your poor man, whose children run over one another like little pigs in a sty, and he caring nothing for them, and they have rickety bones and are half starved and grow up to be idle and steal?  I have noticed that a good man is apt to have good children, and a clever man is apt to have clever children, and a worthless man is apt to have worthless children.  Ain’t that so?  And what sort of children do we want the most of?  Well, in this way we wouldn’t let your worthless fellow have any wife at all until he had brought forth fruit meet for repentance, and your common man only one; but I don’t see but that it would be a real benefit to the State if your good, all-round man, as would be apt to have pious and clever children, had two or three or four families agrowing up to be an honour to him and to the Church, if it ain’t against the command of the Lord; and in Holy Writ the Lord himself says to Solomon that he would have given him as many wives as he wanted, barring them being Gentiles.”

“I will not argue about the Bible; you and I interpret it very differently,” she cried.  “Your social argument might be well enough if it were not that your good man when he had more than one wife would cease to be a good man”—­her voice was vibrating with faith—­“and his children would therefore have the poorest chance from inheritance or training.”