A Gentile Account of Life in Utah's Dixie, 1872-73

Gentile Account, page 062

were loitering in the street when they dismounted caught sight of the bits protruding from Willie's breast pocket, and seemed highly and contemptuously amused, just as we were by the decoration of empty tomato cans worn by an Indian. While they were gone I spent the long morning with my friend-I will call her Louisa, though that is not her name. I think her face is one of the loveliest I have ever seen.70 She is the daughter of rich parents residing in Salt Lake City; that is they are rich now, though they shared in the hard- ships of the emigration, and Louisa herself was born in a wagon during the earliest hurried flight of the Mormons, that from Far West I think.71 She married "in the faith," when she grew up, one of those men who are always unfortunate in their own business affairs, while they are everywhere in demand to lend a helping hand to others. Nothing is amiss in their moral being except that the necessary leaven of selfishness is wanting which will enable them to concentrate their energies first upon their own business as most important to themselves no matter how valuable their help may be to others at the time. Such men as Louisa's husband are universally beloved in the community in which they live, but they are rather trying masters of a household which has to depend upon their daily labours. That Mr. Johns team has been loaned to Brother Smith to bring his family down from Salt Lake City, would irritate most women, %everal sentences, crossed out in ink, were eliminated from the journal at this point. The sentences were disjointed and were irrelevant to the description of "Louisa." "The Saints fled their Missouri settlements, including Far West, in 1839, and reset- tled in Nauvoo, Illinois, which they left in 1846 for the Great Basin. Earlier, they left Kirkland, Ohio, their first gathering place, for Independence, iMissouri, in 1831. 62