last summer I made up my mind to hitch my wagon to the star of empire
and learn as much of my own country as I knew of Europe. I started from
New York in July, expecting to be absent three months, and in that
period obtain an intelligent idea of the far West. After passing two
months and a half in wonderful Colorado and only seeing a fraction of
the Centennial state, I began to realize that in two years I might,
with diligence, get a tolerable idea of this republic west of the
Mississippi. Cold weather setting in, and the fall of snow rendering
mountain travelling in Colorado neither safe nor agreeable, I came to
Utah over the wonderful Denver & Rio Grande railroad, intending to
pass a week prior to visiting New Mexico and Arizona. My week expired
on the 22nd day of October and still I linger among the 'saints.'
I am regarded as more or less demented by eastern friends. If becoming
interested in a most extraordinary anomaly to such an extent as to
desire to study it and to be able to form an intelligent opinion
therein is being demented, then I am mad indeed, for I've not yet got
to the bottom of the Utah problem, and if I lived here years, there
would still be much to learn. Despite this last discouraging fact,
I have improved my opportunities and am able to paragraph what has
come under my own observation or been acquired by absorption of Mormon
and Gentile literature. If the commissioners sent here by Congress to
investigate the Mormon question, at an annual expense of forty thousand
dollars per annum, had studied this question as earnestly as I have,
they never would have told the country that polygamy is dying out. One
or two members of that commission know better, and sooner or later they
must tell the truth or stultify their own souls."


This extract reveals how deeply the anomaly of Mormon life had at once
impressed her. Miss Field was too keen and cultivated an observer not to