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

Twelve Mormon Homes, page 105

Childless herself, this Delia is dearly loved by all the other wives' children, some of them older than she is. That first wife's eldest daughter said to me unaffectedly one day, when we hap- pened to interrupt an earnest conference between her mother and Delia, Mother loves her better than any of us, and admits her into her inmost confidence; "because, of course, she is nearer to pa than we can be." Pity her ! I pitied Delia from the depths of my soul ! I saw her wince once at an allusion to her childlessness, and thought how happy that devoted, affectionate nature might have made a home where she ruled sole mistress of the heart of a husband worthy of her. Yet Delia was one of those who spoke most earnestly to me of polygamy as of divine institution, and rejected with horror the solution of the Mormon difficulty which I advocated: that Con- gress should forbid any further polygamous marriages, but legal- ize those that already existed, seemed to me both just and merciful. "Secure my social position! " she once repeated after me. "How can that satisfy me! I want to be assured of my position in God's estimation. If polygamy is the Lord's order, we must carry it out in spite of human laws and persecutions. If our mar- riages have been sins, Congress is no viceregent of God; it can- not forgive sins, nor make what was wrong, right. `Hard for me if polygamy were abolished, without some provision for women situated as I am! ' Yes, but how much harder to bring myself to accept such a law as you speak of, and admit, as I should be admitting, that all I have sacrified has not been for