Explore "Buried Alive!" by Percy B. St. John on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The harem system, where eighty wives or more lived under one roof, or divan--the parent abode--had not, at the time of which we speak, been introduced. Mormonism, in its open defiance of the world, was not the hideous thing it is now--shameless, reckless, vile--beyond power of description. But even in its early days, when polygamy was restricted to two, or, at most, three wives, it was revolting enough.
A man may here keep a wife and concubine under the same roof, in the shape of a governess, or servant, or companion; but the woman knows it not; or even, if she suspects it, and, for her own dignity's sake, or the happiness of her children, declines to make a scandal of it, at least, she avows it not. Let us enter Dou's Creek, and see the picture it represents. It was a village of about thirty houses and tents, built without much regularity, but the doors always looking towards a common centre. There was always an affectation of Arcadian and patriarchal simplicity about the Mormons, which seems as suitable as might be with a congregated mass of London pickpockets and street- walkers.