Twelve Mormon Homes : Twelve Mormon homes visited in succession on a journey through Utah to Arizona.

Twelve Mormon Homes, page 103

and patting us. She had only been in Utah three months, and had come out with a train of indigent, almost destitute, converts. When such persons arrive, the bishops of the different wards provide them with homes and work, and Bishop Norman had taken her to his own roof, because her absolute deafness made her an unacceptable inmate to most people. "But I can make you hear, can't I?" screamed the jolly wife into her ear, growing purple with the exertion. The deaf woman nodded with a pleased look, as she replied, "Never once yet ." Fortunately for Mrs. Norman's confusion, she went on to tell me that "never once yet" had she regretted leaving England. The saints were so good to her, notwithstand- ing her infirmity. I thought Mrs. Norman certainly was, when I saw how much trouble she had to make the sufferer under- stand anything. Mrs. Norman said she always went to meeting, and seemed to enjoy it as much as if she knew what was said there; and I noticed that one of the wives remained at home to take care of the house that evening to let Priscilla go to meeting, "because it was one of the few pleasures she seemed to have." She had been aged by a domestic tragedy, which whitened her hair in early youth, but her deafness had come on gradually. She was a "servant" in the Normans' house, but, in the south- ern Mormon settlements at least, there is no distinction made between mistress and servant. The younger "sisters" think it no degradation to go to live in the houses of the married ones and help them with their work, and when work is over, they sit down to meals or "go to parties" together. I am not speaking of the rougher sort alone. I have met a wealthy bishop's daughter at a dance, dressed in white muslin, who has opened the door for I03