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Passepartout could not behold without a certain fright these women,
charged, in groups, with conferring happiness on a single Mormon.
His common sense pitied, above all, the husband. It seemed to him
a terrible thing to have to guide so many wives at once across
the vicissitudes of life, and to conduct them, as it were,
in a body to the Mormon paradise with the prospect of seeing them
in the company of the glorious Smith, who doubtless was the chief ornament
of that delightful place, to all eternity. He felt decidedly repelled
from such a vocation, and he imagined--perhaps he was mistaken--
that the fair ones of Salt Lake City cast rather alarming glances
on his person. Happily, his stay there was but brief. At four the party
found themselves again at the station, took their places in the train,
and the whistle sounded for starting. Just at the moment, however,
that the locomotive wheels began to move, cries of "Stop! stop!" were heard.
Trains, like time and tide, stop for no one. The gentleman
who uttered the cries was evidently a belated Mormon. He was
breathless with running. Happily for him, the station had neither
gates nor barriers. He rushed along the track, jumped on the rear
platform of the train, and fell, exhausted, into one of the seats.
Passepartout, who had been anxiously watching this amateur gymnast,
approached him with lively interest, and learned that he had taken flight
after an unpleasant domestic scene.
When the Mormon had recovered his breath, Passepartout ventured
to ask him politely how many wives he had; for, from the manner
in which he had decamped, it might be thought that he had twenty at least.
"One, sir," replied the Mormon, raising his arms heavenward
--"one, and that was enough!"
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