in every sense by the society to which these gentlemen belong. Another
gentleman now has his fourth wife, and he, too, is a most strenuous
believer, and not his bitterest enemy can rake up the smallest accusation
against his character. He, too, is a strong and upright man, fully
capable of another wife if time should chance to bring it about. Now, the
odd part of it is that, having married four times, and each time in the
same village, where all the families are more or less connected, he is
more or less related to every single individual in the parish. First,
there are his own blood relations and his wives' blood relations, and
then there are their relations' relations, and next his sons and
daughters have married and introduced a fresh roll, and I really do not
think either he or anybody else knows exactly where the list ends. This
is nothing uncommon. Though clans and tribes no longer settle under their
respective chiefs in villages, the families of the same name and blood
still present a very close representation of the clan system. They have
all the tribal relationship without any of its feeling. Instead of
forming a strong body and helping each other, these people seemed to
detest one another, and to lose no opportunity of snatching some little
advantage or telling some scandalous tale. In fact, this in-and-in
breeding seems one of the curses of village life, and a cause of
stagnation and narrowness of mind. This marrying and giving in marriage
is not singular to well-to-do leaders of chapel society, but goes on with
equal fervour among the lower members. The cottage girls and cottage boys
marry the instant they get a chance, and it is not at all uncommon to
find comparatively young labourers who have had two wives. There is
nothing in this to reproach: it is a peculiarity of the cast of mind
which I am endeavouring to describe--a cast of mind perhaps not much
marked by sentimentality. Something in this practice reminds one of the
Mormons. Certainly the wives are not taken together, but they are sealed
as fast as circumstances permit. Something in it has a Mormonite aspect