attention on the man behind me. I went out with the heady assurance that
my first move had succeeded; but I went, too, with the restrained pulse
of realizing that I had yet to join issue with the decisive event and do
it warily.

I do not remember where I found the Board of Health in session. I recall
only the dark, official board-room, the members at the table, and--as
the one small spot of light and interest to me--Mr. Hewitt's
white-bearded face, as an attendant opened the door to me, and the
Mayor, looking up alertly, nodded across the room, and waved his hand to
a chair.

As soon as he had opened the meeting, we withdrew together to a settee
in some remote corner, and I began to tell him, as quickly as I could,
the desperateness of the Mormon situation. "Yes," he said, "but why
can't your people obey the law?"

I explained what I have been trying to explain in this narrative--that
these people, following a Church which they believed to be guided by
God, and regarding themselves as objects of a religious persecution,
could not be brought by means of force to obey a law against conscience.
I explained that I was not pleading to save their pride but to spare
them useless suffering; their history showed that no proscription, short
of extermination outright, could overcome their resistance; but what
force could not accomplish, a little sensible diplomacy might hope to
effect. No first step could be made, by them, towards a composition of
their differences with the law so long as the law was administered with
a hostility that provoked hostility. But if we could obtain some
mitigation of the law's severity, the leaders of the Church were willing
to surrender themselves to the court--such of them as had not already