Salt Lake City Opera House

I was greatly astonished to find in the desert heart of the continent a place of public amusement which for capacity, beauty, and comfort has no superier in America, except the Opera Houses of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. It is internally constructed somewhat like the first of these, seats twenty-five hundred people, and commodiously receives five hundred more, when, as in the present instance, the stage is thrown into the parquet, and the latter boarded up to the level of the former for dancing. Externally the building is a plain,but not ungraceful structure, of stone, brick and stucco. My greatest surprise was the really exquisite beauty of the gilt and painted decorations of the great arch over the stage, the cornices, and the moulding about the proscenium-boxes. President Young, with a proper pride, assured my that every particle of the ornamental work was by indigenous and saintly hands.

Invitation to a ball

The ball to which I have referred was such an opportunity for studying Mormon sociology as three months' ordinary stay in Salt Lake might not have given me. . . . All the Saints within a half day's ride of the city come flocking into it to spend the Fourth (of July). . .

"Dancing to commence at 4 p.m. "

Bierstadt, myself, and three gentlemen of our party were the only three Gentiles whom I found invited by President Young to meet in the neighborhood of three thousand Saints. . . . I excused myself from numerous kind invitations to be introduced to a partner and join in the dances. The fact was, I was greatly wished to make a thorough study of the ball-room, and I know my readers will applaud my self-denial in not dancing, since it enables me to tell them how Utah good society looks. . . . There was very little ostentation in dress at the ball . . . Patrician broadcloth and silk were the rare exceptions, but they were cordially associated with the great mass of plebian tweed and calico. Few ladies wore jewelry or feathers. There were some pretty girls swimming about in tasteful whip-syllabub of puffed tarlatan. . . I saw multitudes of kindly , good-tempered countenances, and a score of which would have been called pretty anywhere . . .

To blossom like the rose

About forty miles from Salt Lake City we begin to find Nature's barrenness succumbing to the truly marvellous industry of the Mormon people. To understand the exquisite beauty of simple green grass, you must travel through eight hundred miles of safe-brush and grama, -- the former, the homely gray-leaved plant of our Eastern goose-stuffing, grown into a dwarf tree six feet high . . . By incredible labor, bringing down rivulets from the snow-peaks of the Wahsatch range and distributing them over the levels by every ingenious device known to artificial irrigation, the Mormon farmers have converted the bottoms of the canons through which we approached Salt Lake into fertile fields and pasture-lands, whose emerald sweep soothed our eyes wearied with so many leagues of monotony, as an old home-strain molifies the ear irritated by the protracted rhythmic clash or the dull, steady buzz of iron machinery. . . . The student of rewards and punishments might well believe that none but God's chosen people could cause this horrible desert, after such triumphant fashion, to blossom like the rose.

"Massive beauty, without parallel in this world"

Mormondom being my theme, and my space so limited, I must resist the temptation to give detailed accounts of the many marvellous masterpieces of mimetic art into which we find the rocks of this region everywhere carved by the hand of Nature. . . . in the world of marvellous architectural simulations, vast cemeteries crowded with monuments, obelisks, castles, fortresses, and natural colossi from two to five hundred feet high, done in argillaceous sandstone or a singular species of conglomerate, all of which owe their existance almost entirely to the agency of wind. . . . Is it possible to conceive an instrument more powerful, more versatile? Indeed, practically, there is no kind of surface, no kind of cut, which it is not capable of making. . . . Repeatedly, I saw it gouge out circular grooves around portions of a bluff, and leave them standing as isolated columns, with heavy base and capital, presently to be solidified into just such rockk pillars as throng the cemeteries . . . Contrasting the Mormon settlements with their surrounding desolation, we could not wonder that their success has fortified this people . . .

A Light Air

Please enjoy the little dance tune, called "Sans Souci" in my profile. I look forward to sharing more about my trip with Albert with you anon. All the best, Ludlow.