to plural marriage.  As a Mormon woman said, “A polygamist is the most ingenious liar imaginable.”  In the earlier days on their arrival in Zion, when securely in the toils, their money in the hands of the elders, too far in the wilderness to make hope of return possible, these people have awakened to the horrors of the system, and women on the day of their arrival were hurried to the Endowment House to swell the number of polygamic wives in the land.  Perhaps of all the women in Utah those who live in constant terror of their husbands entering polygamy are the most to be pitied.  These plural marriages are performed in private in the Endowment House, a building in the same enclosure with the Tabernacle and Temple.  Here they take oaths of allegiance to the church that absolve them from obedience to the laws of our country, when they conflict with their laws.  They consider their obligations to their religion such that they perjure themselves on the witness stand in the most unblushing manner.  They thus defeat the attempts to gain evidence of their marriages.  Apostates, since the protection given to them by United States troops and the moral support of the Gentiles, have revealed many of the secrets of this place.  This apostacy at any previous period of their history would have cost them their lives, as they take the most solemn oaths never to betray this most absurd and sacrilegious performance.  The Endowment House is arranged to represent the Garden of Eden.  The permanent Adam and Eve of the establishment are a man and woman prominent in the church.  A well known public functionary who performs the ceremony represents God, while his satanic majesty fulfils his own appropriate functions.  The ordeal lasts from nine in the morning until three in the afternoon, and one or more wives can be taken at one ceremony.

The Miles case which attained such notoriety in Utah a short time ago was one not altogether uncommon, in which a young girl engaged to a Mormon Elder in London accompanied him to this country to have the marriage ceremony performed by the fathers of the church.  On their way thither the elder felt constrained to tell this young convert that he had already made promises of marriage to two Danish sisters who were awaiting him in Zion; but he assured her that though he felt obliged to fulfil all his vows yet she should be his first and only legal wife.  She reluctantly consented to this humiliating compromise and on his arrival in Salt Lake he took the three maidens to the Endowment House and they were in turn married to him.  Unfortunately for conjugal felicity, the English girl was made second in order on account of priority of age of one of the Danish sisters.  Terrible scenes ensued and in her indignation this girl denounced her husband and he was brought into court on the charge of bigamy.  Only once before in the whole history of Mormonism has the court gained evidence of these plural marriages.  Wives are bound by such terrible oaths at the marriage