The number of the wives of many of the principal Mormons has been
greatly exaggerated. Attached to Young's establishment in Salt Lake
City, there are only sixteen. His first wife occupies the Mansion-House
exclusively, while the others are quartered in the Lion-House. Besides
these, he has probably fifty or sixty more, scattered all over the
Territory, and in the principal cities of the United States and of Great
Britain. His living children do not exceed thirty in number. Kimball's
wives, resident in Salt Lake City, are quite as numerous as Young's, and
his children even more so. Both of them aim to reproduce the domestic
life of the Biblical patriarchs; and within the squares which they
occupy their descendants dwell also, with their wives and progeny, all
of them acknowledging the control of the head of the family. The harems
of very few of the Church dignitaries approach these in magnitude. The
extent of the practice of polygamy cannot be determined by a residence
in Salt Lake City alone, for it is there that those Church officers
congregate whose wealth enables them to maintain large families. As
the traveller journeys northward or southward, he finds the instances
diminish in almost exact proportion to his remoteness from the central
ecclesiastical influence.
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