THE COMIC SIDE OF POLYGAMY.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume IX, Issue 967, 6 August 1881, Page 3

THE COMIC SIDE OF POLYGAMY.

These is a comic as well as a pathetic side of Mormon polygamy. Among the Mormon women in Utah was one who accepted in full faith the polygamic revelation. She had found in polygamy an ample compensation in the* supposed right of the first wife to choose her husband’s succeeding wives. This was her argument: “ If the first wife selects the other wives, it has the effect of showing them that the husband thinks much of her judgment, and is willing to abide by it, and that they will have to do the same. This is of course, as it should be. But if she lets her husband choose his own wife he is almost certain to take a fancy to some one whom the first wife does not like at all, and consequently her authority is undermined. The first wife ought to have all the power in her own hands.” The sequel of this lady’s story is extremely ludicrous. Lifter she had chosen two other wives for her husband, he was so perverse as to choose a fourth for himself, the fourth being not at all to her liking, as she herself admitted. This is her

account of the matter : “ ‘I tell you,’ said I, ‘I am quite disgusted with you; a man with three wives—and I one of them —to go talking twaddle to a clattering hussy like that with her cat’s eyes and red hair!’ ‘Golden hair, my dear,’ he said, * Charlotte s hair is golden.’ ‘ I say red! it’s straight, staring red —as red as red can be, I told him ; and then we had a regular fight over it. I don’t mean that we came to blows, but we had some hot words, and he went out and left us two alone. Then that young hussy was impudent, and I don’t know how it was, but somehow when we left off our conversation I found some of Charlotte’s red hair between my fingers, and there,” she said innocently holding out quite a good sized tuft of auburn hair, “ there, I put it to you, sister Stenhouse, is that red, or is it not ?”