If domestic
troubles become so aggravated as to be unendurable, recourse is usually
had to Brigham Young for a divorce. There are women in Salt Lake City
who have been married and divorced half-a-dozen times within a year. The
first wife maintains a supremacy over all the others. On the occasion
of her marriage, a civil magistrate usually officiates, and the rite of
"sealing" is afterwards administered by Young. By the civil process,
in the cant language of the Mormons, she is bound to her husband "for
time," and by the ecclesiastical solemnization "for eternity." Every
wife taken after the first is called a "spiritual," and is "sealed"
ecclesiastically only, not civilly. It follows, as a legitimate
consequence, that the first wife of one man "for time" may be the
"spiritual" wife of another man "for eternity." The power of sealing and
unsealing is vested in the Head of the Church, which, however, he may
and does assign, with certain limitations, to deputies. The ceremony is
performed in a room in the Mansion-House within Brigham's square, which
is furnished with an altar and kneelng-benches. In every instance of
divorce, the woman is supplied with a printed certificate of the fact,
for which a fee of ten or eleven dollars is exacted.
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