Johanna Härling Christenson Part 3

Photo found in Joseph's journal. John is kneeling on the far left.
Behind him from left to right are Lilian, Joseph, and Johanna.
There is an unidentified woman between Johanna and Christena.
The others in the photo are unidentified.

"The company arrived in Salt Lake City sometime in October."

According to the documentation, the company actually arrived in Salt Lake City in September. It was more than likely sometime in October when Johanna and her traveling companions arrived in American Fork.

"The next morning a man by the name of John Christenson and his wife called there, he being employed as interpreter for the Emmigrants. . . . She liked this young man very much. He explained the gospel to her and converted her not only to the truth of the gospel but to plural marriage. In March 12th, 1864 she was married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City."

There is so much to talk about here. First of all, because these events were described in so few sentences I initially concluded that John and Johanna experienced a whirlwind courtship. There was probably a time when I believed a strong, able-bodied single man to protect her and provide for her in the western frontier was in severe shortage - as if that were true and had anything to do with the stated purpose of polygamy at the time. There was actually 5 months between the time Johanna arrived in American Fork and when she married John as a plural wife - more than enough time for a traditional courtship, especially in the traditional Mormon way. How exactly that courtship looked we can only speculate. Since John was "employed" as an interpreter for Swedish immigrants - we don't really know if he actually got paid or if it was more of a calling - he could have been instrumental in teaching Johanna English. Perhaps language training sessions between John and Johanna facilitated a means to further their relationship.

  

We do know from accounts of others that courtship of additional wives did routinely happen. Men had to win the hearts of their plural wives while their current wife (or wives) were home taking care of the chores and their own children. We also know from another memoir based on Johanna's recollections (discussed in detail later) that when Christena, John's legal wife (not to be confused with Christina, Johanna's biological sister), found out John was interested in Johanna and was open to the idea of taking a plural wife she "encouraged it. . . . She would have someone to help her with all the heavy, certainly monotonous and dismal work, someone almost like a servant." Perhaps, too, Christena believed in the doctrine of the necessity of polygamy for ultimate exaltation as taught by Brigham Young and felt this was her chance to gain a higher level of exaltation through her husband's faithfulness and unquestioning devotion to the prophet.

  

According to what has been written, Christena did accompany John to Bishop Harrington's house the night Johanna arrived. Maybe they hit it off. Maybe Christena liked her right away. As was commonly the practice - and facilitated men fathering as many children as possible to enlarge their earthly and eternal kingdoms - many Mormon men married teenagers when their current wife (or wives) were becoming less fertile. When Christena first met Johanna, Christena was 27 and Johanna was 23. Their age difference certainly shouldn't have presented the same kind of threat which was reported to instill envy and jealously within an older wife trying to compete with a young, teenage girl attracting her husband's attention. John, however, was 35 years old - 12 years Johanna's senior. Comparatively speaking, I wouldn't necessarily describe him as a "young man" in the way he was described. But even if Christena and Johanna did hit it off and become friends, sharing a husband with another woman is another thing entirely. 

Since it was reported that John Married Johanna in the Endowment House in Salt Lake, I'm hopeful that their wedding night was also spent in Salt Lake. Nothing has been written about the house they occupied in American Fork, but I have no reason to believe it was built to accommodate more than one wife.

 I can't really imagine many worse things than hearing the sounds of my husband and his new wife on their wedding night as I lay in my own bed. Alone.

But even if John and Johanna spent their first night away from Christena, the family would spend about 8 years, through the birth of 6 more children - 3 to each wife - in small, confined spaces before each wife would occupy her own space. Eight years. Think about that. One husband, two wives, one small house, for eight years.

". . . then her husband built a home on the Main Street of the town. This was a double house, which would be called a duplex now and both families lived there."

Christenson home on Main Street in Gunnison

William Hartley described the house this way:

The children's youthhood home was the native gray sandstone duplex John built on one of his two town lots in Gunnison by 1873. The duplex was a practical housing solution for a double family. It had two front doors. The interior was divided in half, with no interconnecting door. Each side had one large back room used as a kitchen-livingroom-bedroom, an attic room, and kitchen cellar for foods that needed cooling.

Christena's daughter, Tilda, later wrote that her father, John, had his own bedroom, barely big enough for his narrow bed and a bookshelf, in the middle of the house. Tilda reported that he would alternate weeks with each family to share meals, though, as a child, she wouldn't have necessarily known where he was sleeping when he wasn't sleeping in his own bed alone. Johanna and Christena would take turns cleaning his room and doing his laundry.

 After 8 years of sharing a home with Christena, Johanna was finally afforded the luxury of her own space. Hannah referred to this time as a "period of happiness mixed with hard work" and wrote that Johanna "was able to satisfy her soul with flowers and trees all around." Sounds perfect. Almost. . .ahem. . .heavenly!  I'm sure she could have stayed in this arrangement indefinitely, but it was not meant to be. It lasted 15 years. At the age of 47, everything changed for Johanna. 

"Then in 1887 came the "crusade" against plural marriage. . ."

In 1993 my dad recorded an interview with his Aunt Gertie, daughter of Joseph and Lilian, and asked her questions about her grandmother, Johanna. When questioning Gertie about Johanna's polygamous relationship Gertie said this:

I know the double house – the 2-story place – they had kind of a secret stairway, and he would get in there and get upstairs. Then they were trying to find him, you know. He would be there, but they never could find him.

I think "they" refers to law enforcers looking for polygamists. John, like most polygamous men at the time, would go into hiding when government officials would come looking for them. Apparently John had created a hidden a stairway to a secret part of the house back when he built the house so he could hide and not be found.

But even his secret staircase was not fool-proof. According to the historical record and Joseph's journal, John was arrested twice for co-habitation. Both times there was not enough evidence to convict him. 

". . .Johanna was obliged to leave the home she loved so much.  It was winter and bitter cold, but out she must go, and the only available house was a little log cabin of one room.  There was no time to repair the house before she had to move, because of the fear that her husband would be arrested for polygamy." 

According to Hartley's research:

Federal land records show that John homesteaded 160 acres two miles south of Gunnison in Centerfield. His land application states that from 1876 to 1881 his wife and five children—Johanna's family — resided continuously on that land in a log house. It was a token home built to make the claim legal but hardly occupied — a typical frontier way to homestead extra land.

If I remember right, according to the Homestead Act, a claim would become final if it was consistently occupied for 5 years and if the land was farmed. No one actually occupied the small, log house on the homestead claim until Johanna was forced out of her home. Apparently, lying to the government was not at all unusual. (Even my non-Mormon g-g-grandfather lied about a homestead claim in Nebraska. AND he also sent his wife and child to live there alone.) Johanna's oldest son, Joseph, was serving a mission in Sweden and 1 or 2 other siblings could have already relocated to Salt Lake City when she was banished to the Centerfield homestead with the rest of her children.

  

Between the dilapidated Centerfield log cabin and a snake-infested rental, it was almost a year before Johanna  moved into a small home of her own in Gunnison which John  built for her.

 John, however, occupied the "big house" with Christena throughout the rest of his life. If and when conjugal visits with Johanna occurred we have no way of knowing.

Anna and Hannah Christenson

The 1900 census indicated that Johanna was living alone. All of her children were gone - the youngest having died. Her marital status was listed as "D" for divorced. Of course, there was never a legal divorce since there was never a "legal" marriage - only a church-sanctioned marriage and sealing in the records of the Endowment House.

1900 US Census, Gunnison, UT

Despite the similarity in age between the 2 women, jealousy still reared its ugly head. In my dad's interview with Gertie, she spoke several times of Christena's jealousy. I'm fairly certain this is the impression Gertie would have gotten from her Aunts Annie, Emma, and Hannah, all daughters of Johanna. Gertie said:

Well, all I know is that she [Johanna] was his favorite. And he loved her very much. And his other wife was VERY jealous of her, very jealous. . . . Christena was very jealous because he really loved Johanna very much. . . . Christena was very jealous of Johanna.

My dad, William (Bill) Ickes with Gertrude Christenson Anderson on her 90th Birthday in 1991.

Another short reminiscence I have in my possession appears to have been written by Alice Johanna Gledhill, the only child of Johanna's daughter, Anna. (Johanna lived with Anna and her family the last years of her life - Alice was 12 yrs. old when Johanna died.) Alice was the one who wrote about Christena encouraging John initially to marry Johanna, believing she would act as a servant (mentioned above). Alice also wrote:

She [Christena] ordered her around and made it very clear that she considered herself far above Johanna.  Johanna shed many tears, but said nothing.  One day she was sent down into the cellar where the butter and eggs and milk were kept, to bring something up for Christena.  Oh, but that fresh butter and cream looked good! Johanna took some of it and spread the butter on some bread and ate it.  Christena saw her, and told her she was never to take anything like that again, without permission.  Then she proceeded to tell John that Johanna had been "stealing" their food.

Christena found other ways to make Johanna unhappy. They were pregnant at the same time. Christina would belittle Johanna, and say such things as, "What kind of a child do you think you will have? Your child will be nothing. It will either be sickly, or it will have no mind. How do you think that such as you can have a child who will amount to anything?"

Johanna was humble. She had no one to turn to, and she wanted her child to be accepted. She cried many times, and wondered what she could do to make things better. Finally one day she went to a place where there was a bridge over a creek, and a place underneath where you could be sure you were alone.  There she knelt, and talked to her Father in Heaven.  She told Him her problem, and that she would so like to have a child who would make her husband proud.  She promised the Lord that if He would let her have a child that was intelligent and fair to look upon that she would dedicate his life to the Lord. . .

In my mind I have always vilified Christena. I mean, how dare she treat my g-g-grandmother with such disdain! Couldn't she see how difficult it would be to enter an existing family as a plural wife? Shouldn't Christena have done everything she could to make Johanna's transition and very presence as comfortable and pain-free as possible?

It's high time I recognize and acknowledge Christena's pain. Her pain and heartache were just as profound and real as Johanna's.

I think the way Hannah and William Hartley tell it they want to paint the US government as a bad guy in this story. I don't see it that way at all. The government's efforts, hands down, were to protect women and children. Polygamy, without a doubt, was the bad guy here. Eliminate polygamy from the narrative and we've eliminated all of the messy, convoluted, and unnecessary elements found therein: secret stairways, co-habitation arrests, double houses, snake-infested rentals, hunger, tears, accusations, jealousy, heartache, and pain.

Fannie Stenhouse was the legal wife of a prominent Mormon Priesthood holder who wrote about her experience living a polygamous lifestyle in her book A Lady’s life among the Mormons: A record of personal experience as one of the wives of a Mormon elder during a period of more than twenty years (here). She later wrote a longer, "sensationalized" (is how I would describe it) version (here), I believe the earlier version is more honest and accurate in it's historical content; however, when it comes to expressing her genuine feelings I find that both accounts have equal merit. I couldn't help but experience, vicariously, her agony as I read about her lived experience as a Mormon woman in the days of God-ordained polygamy. And I have to wonder how closely her feelings mirror those of Johanna and Christena. Here are some excerpts from her first book:

I now began to feel perfectly reckless, and even willing to throw aside my religion, and take “my chance of salvation.” Rather than submit to Polygamy; for I felt that that new doctrine was a degradation to womankind. I asked myself, “Why did the Lord wish to humiliate my sex in this manner?” though at the same time I believed, as I was told, that the ‘revelation’ was indeed sent from God.”

It never once entered my mind that any man would dare to give a revelation to the world as coming from God except it was true. (p 34)

  

Polygamy was the last thing I thought of at night, and the first thing in the morning. It was with me in my waking hours and in the dead of the night. It haunted me like a spectre. It was like a fearful blight that had fallen upon me and was withering my soul. One thought was ever present in my mind – that thought, Polygamy! (p35)

  

 . . . we were taught that it was to be "for time and for eternity." When I thought that some time my life must end, and that then earthly sorrows would cease, this brought me no comfort; for the cause of my grief was still to exist beyond the grave. Polygamy was to be practiced in heaven as well as on the earth. The only possible hope that remained to me was that there – in another world – I might perhaps be so changed as not to know myself or any one else; or that my feelings might be so greatly altered from what they were in this world that I should not realize any pain from what we were taught were the matrimonial arrangements in heaven. (p 37)

I felt that I was doomed for a time and for eternity, and sometimes it seemed to me impossible that I should pray to a God who could make such unjust laws. How could I teach my little ones to love Him? (p 61)

  

Her husband is to teach her Polygamy, and she must believe; for it is distinctly said, "She shall believe." But should she lack evidence of the truth of the revelation, and can not believe in its divinity, then "She shall be destroyed;" and the Lord, like a kind and loving father, adds, "I will destroy her," What language to place in the mouth of a kind and loving God and Father! How opposite is this to the teachings of Jesus Christ! But it is in keeping with the other teachings of the Mormon Church. Mormonism taught me to look upon the great Ruler of the Universe as a "God of vengeance," while every thing in nature has taught me that he is a "God of love." (p 73)

  

 O men of Utah! If you only knew the secret heart-aches of those you have vowed to love and protect, “and I believe that many of you would guard and protect them from sorrow, if you could,” sift this matter, and know for yourselves how more than foolish it is for you to cast away the true and undivided love of one devoted heart. Pay no attention to your wives when they tell you that they are happy, that they are satisfied. They may tell you this when their very hearts are breaking, simply because they wish to please their husbands, and, above all, to do the will of God. . . . .I can never believe that the great God created our natures, such as they are, and then gave us laws that would outrage them.

I know that the Mormons would answer – “But  you must bring your natures into subjection to the laws of God." I know that no human being ever tried harder than I did to bring my own nature into subjection to this so-called “law of God;" but the more I saw of it, the more I loathed it, until I became perfectly disgusted and humiliated at being obliged to live in accordance with it. (p 83)

  

. . . it must be remembered that, when once the disciples of any faith can be brought to believe in present revelation, they think it is wicked to question what they are taught, and they do not allow their own judgments to influence them in the least. (p 106)

  

I knew very well that if it was the law of God, as I had been led to believe it was, I must endure it, though it should cost me my life. Besides which, Brigham Young and all the authorities used to say that it was "a cross that we all had got to bear", though I used to think that the heaviest portion of the cross was put on woman’s shoulders. They have all told me frequently and positively that there was no salvation or "exaltation in the heavens" without it. (p 112)

  

The time at length arrived for us to go to the "Endowment House," and there at the altar the first wife is expected to give proof of her faith in her religion by placing the hand of the new wife in that of her husband. She is asked the question by Brigham Young, "Are you willing to give this woman to your husband, to be his lawful and wedded wife, for time and for all eternity? If you are, you will manifest it by placing her right hand within the right hand of your husband." I did so. But what words can describe my feelings? The anguish of a whole lifetime was crowded into that one single moment. When it was done, I felt that I had laid every thing upon the altar, and that there was no more to sacrifice. I had given away my husband. What more could the Lord require of me that I could not do? Nothing! (p 118)

I remember well that when I returned home – that "home" which was now to become hateful to me, for his young wife was to live there – my husband said to me, "You have been very brave; but it is not so hard to do, after all, is it?"

During the remainder of that day, how I watched their looks and noted their every word. To me, their tender tones were like daggers, piercing me to the heart. One moment I yearned for my husband’s undivided love; the next moment I hated even the very sight of him, and vowed that he never again should have a place in my heart.

It was only in the dead of night, in my own chamber, that I gave way to the terrible anguish that was consuming me. God and my own soul can alone bear witness to that time of woe. That night was to me such that even the most God-forsaken might pray never to know; and morning dawned without my having for a moment closed my eyes.

It was all over now. Nothing remained but for me to face the fearful reality day after day and hour after hour. I do indeed believe that a man, if he could have felt as I did then, would have sunk beneath the trial. Who but a woman could endure such things and yet live? (p 120)

  

When I look back to those days . . . I can now afford to think as kindly of the second as well as of the first wife; for those young women who marry into Polygamy very often – in fact, I may say, generally – do so from a sincere relief that it is their duty; and I know that they also have their trials. What can they know of happiness – real happiness? (p 121)

  

. . . it was brought home to me most painfully, for it was right before my eyes, under my own roof, day after day. To attempt to describe to the reader the contending feelings that continually and without ceasing tortured my very soul, would be impossible. In my struggles to hide them I thought they would send me dad. I felt that it required more courage to live than to die, but the thought of my little ones restrained me; and I thought that, although my life seemed so utterly worthless to me, it was of the utmost value to them, and to them it should be devoted. I would not die. I would live for their sake. (p 122)

  

 Instead of rebelling against Polygamy, had I only read the revelation carefully, and doubted its divine origin, I would have been saved a life of misery. It was only when I came to the conclusion that Joseph Smith never had this revelation from God that I was delivered from my former faith, and became once more happy. (p 134)

  

. . . where a man has more than one wife his wives are careful to conceal their real feelings from him for fear of creating a prejudice against themselves and in favour of the other wife; for whether a woman loves her husband or not, she does not like it to be said that she has been cast off for another; and I know from experience that Mormon husbands are the very last to learn of their wives’ feelings. (p 147)

 It is painful to witness among the rising generation of boys in Utah the contempt which many evince for every thing that a woman says or does, looking upon her as an inferior being. But this is not to be wondered at, when it is remembered what kind of teaching they have had in the Tabernacle, and the example of some of their own fathers. The sermons abound with allusions to woman’s dependence upon men. Even her salvation through Jesus Christ has to be obtained through her husband! How much greater, then, must man be, with his numerous wives, than either of the wives is individually. (p 153)

  

There is no particular age specified as proper for marriage, but the younger the girl is, the better. It is seldom that there are any girls married under fifteen years of age; but sixteen is a very sweet age, and very desirable for men, themselves ranging in years from forty-five to seventy and over. (p 163)

  

Woman is the glory of man; children are the glory of woman; the more wives, the greater glory to the man; the more children, the greater glory to the woman.

 Out of this faith comes the novel doctrine that it is not only the duty of men to multiply wives to themselves here, but that it also devolves upon them to see that all their relatives who have died are placed in a position in the world to come, where they also can have wives and children associated with their names, and thus increase their glory. (p 167)

And from her second book, a few more excerpts:

How often—even while I still clung to Mormonism—did it appear strange to me that the "revelations" of distinguished Saints should so frequently coincide with their own personal wishes, and come at such convenient times. (p 93)

  

Of one thing I am certain I was then indeed a miserable slave, with no one to stretch forth a kindly hand and strike away the fetters of my mental degradation and lead me forth into light and liberty. (p 369)

It is a cruel thing for a woman anywhere to know that her husband’s affections are divided, that she is not his only love, and that his heart is no longer all her. But far worse is the lot of the wife in Utah. She has to see and be present when the love-making is going on, when her husband is flirting and saying soft nonsense, or looking unutterable things at silly girls who are young enough to be her daughters; —nay, her own daughters and her husband’s may actually be older than the damsel he is courting for his second wife! Such an outrage upon the holiest feelings of womanhood would not for a moment be tolerated in any civilised community; but among the Saints women are taught that this is but one part of that cross which we all have got to bear. . . . How sweetly did the men preach patience and submission to the will of Heaven. I wonder where their own patience and submission would have been had matters been reversed and their wives had been taught that it was their privilege and a religious duty to court, and flirt with and marry men younger and handsomer than their husbands. (p 382)

Age or plain looks are nothing with such men; the girls are taught that they can exalt them to greater honor and happiness in heaven than young and untried men could, and that they ought to feel honored by receiving tender attentions from the chosen servants of the Lord. One wife, or even half-a-dozen, if they chance to have so many, of course will not stand in the way. The husband is the lord and master, and a woman’s wishes count for nought. (p 383)

Apostle Heber C. Kimball to Fannie: “Things have been all upside down in the world, Sister Fanny,” he answered, “and the Priesthood is going to set them all in order. It is the women’s place to minister to the men, and the men, in return, will save them in the Kingdom, if they are good girls. (p 417)

 . . . when doubts and fears crowded themselves upon my mind, so that I was compelled to give them utterance, I would lock myself in my room or wander away to some lonely spot and there vent my feelings in indignant words. At other times I did think over the wrongs which Polygamy inflicted, until my feelings were almost beyond endurance; then in those moments of anguish I would prostrate myself in humility and repentance before the Lord, and would plead for strength to endure and submit to His will. Then again, I would pace the room, my soul filled with rebellion, and heartfelt curses against a system which had so withered and blighted all my life and had taken for ever the sunshine out of my existence. For ever! Ah! how those words lingered in my thoughts; how they chilled my heart, and left me utterly without hope; for we were told that eternity would be but a repetition of this life on earth. Polygamy, we were taught, was to be practiced in eternity; it was to be the "Celestial Order of Heaven;" it was an eternal law. But if it was so loathsome now, how should I ever become reconciled to, and happy in it? (p 422)

. . . when one at starting accepts a system as true – however absurd that system may be – and learns to regard all that is connected with it as beyond the shadow of a doubt – after years of discipline, the mind is ready to receive almost anything that may be offered to it from the same source. In my own case, I was so convinced that, however reason might object, all that we were taught was true, that I was utterly without hope, and would have felt happy could I have believed that death was annihilation. Of earthly happiness I had given up all expectation. (p 422)

Surrounded by my children, living under the same roof with my husband, my heart was, nevertheless, filled with a sense of utter loneliness and desolation. There was no one in whom I could confide, to whom I might tell my sorrows, and from whose counsel or strength I might derive comfort I dared not even go and lay my griefs before God, for I had been led to believe that all my suffering was caused by an arbitrary decree which He willed to be enforced. How false a notion of that loving heavenly Father whose tender care is so manifestly shown in his gentle dealings with the weakest of His creatures! (p 424)

Had I implicitly believed in the divinity of the Revelation I should have bowed my head in meek submission. But I did neither of these. The feelings of my heart naturally led me to hate with a most perfect hatred the very mention of the word Polygamy, while at the same time I still believed, or tried to make myself believe, that the Revelation was from God, and must therefore be obeyed. Such was the strange and contradictory position in which I was placed.

My husband and the Elders had taught me that the fault was not in Mormonism but in my early Gentile training; and I believed them, and thought that all the inconsistencies which I had heard of, or seen, in Brigham Young and the other prominent men, should be attributed to the weakness of human nature; and not to the system. (p 429)

Why, I was compelled to drain the cup of degradation to its very dregs—the sanctity of my home itself was invaded, and I felt ashamed to think that I—wife and mother as I was—was entertaining my husband’s affianced “wife” (!)—a child no older than my own eldest girl; and before long she would be brought home in my presence and among my children! Oh, detestable and unnatural desecration of the sanctity of home! Oh brutalising and immoral burlesque upon religious faith! How could I ever have deluded myself into the idea that such a profanation of all that is good could by any possibility be right, that such an outrage upon decency and propriety, such a violation of the laws of reason and religion could be pleasing in the sight of an all-pure God ? (p 440)

I now expected very soon to be called upon to undergo the most painful ordeal that any wife can be required to pass through: I was to give my husband another wife – such is the sacrifice demanded of every Mormon woman.

The thought of doing this was worse than death to me. I felt injured, humiliated and degraded by it, and yet I still tried to believe that it was the will of God, and must therefore be right. To me, this outrage upon all the purest feelings of womanhood seemed more like the will of men – men of the basest and most unholy passions. It was repulsive to me in whatever form it was presented, but still I reproached my own rebellious heart for feeling so, for I had been told that the ways of the Lord were past finding out, and however unlike Him this Revelation might appear, we Mormon women had been taught that it was our duty to bend our wills and to suffer in unquestioning and uncomplaining silence. (p 451)

Notwithstanding every effort of faith, doubts would arise, and in bitterest anguish I thought – this is more like the work of cruel man than of God. Why should man have this power over woman, and she so helpless? Surely a just and impartial God can have nothing to do with this! (p 454)

  

. . . it must not be imagined that those who are most zealous in signing petitions and forcing them upon their sisters, are necessarily the greatest believers in the “Celestial Order.” . . . These are the women, who, finding their own happiness wrecked, are not satisfied until they have dragged every other woman they meet with into the same snare. They appear to have no mercy upon their own sex, and when persuasive words fail to soften the “rebellious” wife they will repeat to her that portion of the “Revelation” which says that the wife who refuses consent shall be destroyed; and thus they work upon her fears and her devotion to her religion. It is painful to see women so hopeless themselves that they find a satisfaction in making others equally miserable. (p 464)

An utter disregard to the feelings or happiness of individuals in one of the distinguishing features of Mormonism. Polygamy hardens the hearts of both men and women towards those whom they should love most tenderly; (p 464)

In married life both husband and wife give way to each other in a thousand little things, of no consequence in themselves, but quite sufficient, without the presence of love, to sow the seeds of discord. But when love has fled, and the husband looks upon his wife—the companion of his youth, the mother of his children—not as the partner of his whole life and the sharer—of all his joys and sorrows, but as a person whose presence is a reproach to him and who is an inconvenience rather than otherwise—and when the wife regards her husband as one whom formerly she loved with true devotion, but who has cruelly broken her heart and trampled upon her feelings, and who is nothing to her now but a tyrant whose very presence is painful to her,—can there then be any forbearance, any of those gentle kindnesses, any of those loving forgivenesses, any of those mutual tendernesses and sweet confidences which constitute the charm of married life, and make it what the Apostle said it was—a type of the sacred union between Christ and His people in heaven. (p 562)

Those who have never been enslaved by a superstitious faith which mentally and bodily enthrals its devotees, as Mormonism does, can form no idea of the joy, the happiness, which is experienced when, after years of spiritual servitude, the shackles are burst asunder and the slave is “free!” There is pleasure even in the thought itself that one is free—free to think and free to act, free to worship according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, and free to speak one’s own opinions and sentiments, without the constant fear that some spy is listening to every word and that the consequences may be far from pleasant! (p 578)

Never; until new hearts and new natures are given to the women of Utah, and all that is womanly, and pure, and sacred, is crushed out from their souls, can one single woman be truly happy in Polygamy! They may say so publicly, they may, for their religion’s sake, tell strangers that thus it is; but listen to them when they are alone among themselves; read, if you can, their hearts, and mark the bitterness which they try to stifle there; nay, see upon their very features the handwriting which bears witness against their assertion that they are happy and which proclaims to the world the sorrow which they vainly try to hide! (p 622)

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