"You don't act old, Mr. Lincoln," Gabe Hamilton said. That was a perceptive comment, perceptive enough to make the former president incline his head in gratitude. Most people would thoughtlessly have said, You aren 't old, Mr. Lincoln, no matter how obvious a lie it was. Hamilton went on, "There aren't enough people half your age, sir, who have such a progressive view of what labour in this country needs to do to make its voice felt."
"I think-I've always thought-it's wrong for one man to say to another, 'You bake the bread by the sweat of your brow, and I'll eat it,' " Lincoln answered. "That's plain common sense; whoever wrote the fable of the little red hen knew as much."
To his surprise, two tears ran down Juliette's cheeks. "That was Harriet's favorite fairy tale," she said, dabbing at her eyes with her apron. "We lost her to diphtheria when she was four, and we haven't been able to have another."
"A lot of diphtheria in this town," Gabe Hamilton said, as if by thinking of the disease he did not have to think of his dead child. "I wish they knew what causes it."
"Yes. I grieve with you." Lincoln had lost his young son, Tad, not long after losing the War of Secession. One pain piled on the other had been almost too much to bear.
"That isn't what we were talking about, though," Juliette said, determined to be gay. "We were talking about your holiday, and how it's high time you had a proper one after working so hard for so long."
"Well, I have it," Lincoln said. "I might not have wanted it much, but here it is. You finally even put me on the little train over to the Great Salt Lake, which is an extraordinary place indeed if it will bear up this bony old carcass, as it most assuredly did. In any proper, self-respecting water, I sink like a stone."
"Everything in Utah is contrary," Gabe said, to which Lincoln could only nod.
He said, "I expected the other shoe to drop by now, and the Mormons to declare themselves out of the Union if that was what they had in mind when they cut themselves off from the rest of the states."
"That was what I thought they'd do, too," Hamilton said. "Maybe they haven't the nerve for it, when push comes to shove."
"On brief acquaintance, I would say the Mormons' nerve suffices for almost anything," Lincoln answered. "Did you see the notice in the Bee for the ball tomorrow night at the Social Hall? Ten dollars for a gentleman and one wife, with all wives after the first in at two dollars a head." Polygamy had captured his attention in the same way it did the attention of the Utah Gentiles.
"Those affairs were commoner in Brigham Young's day than they are now," Hamilton said. "And the price is pretty dear there: my guess is, they're raising money for guns or lawyers or maybe both. I don't think they'll up and secede, not now I don't; they've waited too long. If I'm reading John Taylor right, he's trying for Utah 's admission as a state on his terms-he'll promise to let the flag fly if Washington leaves polygamy alone and lets him keep out the Gentiles so they can't ever outvote the Mormons here. In the United States but not of them, you might say."
"They would use the same sorts of laws to keep out certain white men that some states now employ to exclude Negroes, you mean," Lincoln said. "I might almost be tempted to favor their effort along those lines, if for no other reason than to see that entire class of legislation, which has long outlived its usefulness, cast down."
"I'm only guessing, mind you," Hamilton said. "Do you want me to take you to the Tabernacle Sunday, to hear what the Mormon leaders tell their flock?"
"I'd be very interested to hear that, and to see it, too," Lincoln answered. "How easy are they about having Gentiles come in and watch them at worship? Can we do it without causing a ruction?"
"Won't be any trouble at all," Gabe assured him. "Anyone can go into the Tabernacle: they reckon some of the folks who come to watch end up converting, and they're right, too. When the Temple 's built, now, that'll be sacred ground, I hear, with no Gentiles allowed inside."
"If you're sure it would be no trouble, then," Lincoln said. "I don't want to keep you from your own devotions."
"Oh, you don't need to fret about that," Juliette assured him. "They don't start their services till two in the afternoon, to let people come into Salt Lake City from their farms and from the little towns roundabout."
"We'll do it," Gabe Hamilton declared, as decisive as a railroad president ordaining higher freight rates.
Do it they did. Lincoln spent that Sunday morning by himself, reading Pilgrim's Progress. Though he believed in God and reckoned himself a Christian, he'd been disappointed by too many preachers who smugly accepted things as they were to attend church regularly. Walking through the wilderness of the world with Bunyan suited him better: he'd known the valley of Humiliation, and many times had to fight his way out of the slough named Despond.
Gabe and Juliette came back from church a little before noon and, with Lincoln, ate a hasty dinner of sausage and bread, washed down with coffee. When they finished, Gabe asked, "Are you ready, sir?"
"I reckon I am," Lincoln said. "Do we need to leave so early?"
He soon discovered they did. As Juliette had said, people came from a long way outside of Salt Lake City to attend the service. A great many people from within the city came to attend the service, too. The streets around Temple Square were a sea of carriages, wagons, horses, mules, and people on foot. The Hamiltons had to tie up their buggy a couple of blocks off and, with Lincoln, make their slow way through the press toward the Tabernacle. In most towns, Lincoln would have worried more about leaving the horse and carriage so far from where he was going, but Salt Lake City, save for a small number of hoodlums, seemed an exceptionally law-abiding place.
Lincoln's height and familiar face made some people stop and stare and others draw away to give him and his companions room to advance past the granite blocks awaiting inclusion in the Temple. The net result was that he, Gabe, and Juliette got into the Tabernacle about as fast as they would have had he been inconspicuous and anonymous.
The Tabernacle seemed large from the outside. From the inside, with one great hall covered by the overarching whitewashed roof (the latter decorated with evergreen and with paper flowers), it was truly enormous. "You could have taken the crowds in both the buildings where I was nominated for president and lost them inside here," Lincoln said. "How many does this place hold, anyhow?"
"Twelve, thirteen thousand, something like that," Gabe Hamilton answered. Women predominated in the center of the church, while men made up the majority in the side aisles. Hamilton led his wife and Lincoln up into the gallery rather than down onto the floor, explaining, "If you like, we can sit down front, but they'll aim some of the preaching straight at us."
"I've had enough preaching aimed straight at me, thanks," Lincoln said, at which Hamilton chuckled. Lincoln went on, "If you don't mind, let's find one seat on the aisle, so I can stretch out these long legs of mine." Once seated, he looked around with a lively curiosity. The Tabernacle seemed to be soaking up people as a thirsty towel soaks up water. Many paused to drink from the huge cask of water by one door, dipping it up with the tin cups provided for the purpose.
At the front of the Tabernacle sat the choir, men on one side, women on the other. When the great organ began to play, Gabe Hamilton took his watch from his pocket. "That's two o'clock, on the dot," he said, adjusting the timepiece.
A lay brother in a sack suit announced a hymn. He stood a long way off, but Lincoln could hear him clearly: the acoustics of the building were very good. He prepared to add his own voice to those of the folk around him, but the audience did not sing, leaving that to the choir. He'd heard the choir was so fine, you could listen to it once and die happy. He didn't find it so; good but not grand was his mental verdict. The organ accompanying the singers was something else again-as mighty an instrument, and as well played, as he'd ever heard.