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Chapter Six — Planning Sales Dialogues
and Presentations
Learning Outcomes
1. Explain why it is essential to focus on the customer when planning sales calls.
2. Understand alternative ways of communicating with prospects and customers through canned sales
presentations, written sales proposals, and organized sales dialogues and presentations.
3. Discuss the nine components in the sales dialogue planning template that can be used for planning an organized
sales dialogue or presentation.
4. Explain how to write a customer value proposition statement.
5. Link buying motives to benefits of the seller’s offering, support claims made for benefits, and reinforce verbal
claims made.
6. Engage the customer by setting appointments.

Chapter Outline

I. Introduction

II. Customer-Focused Sales Dialogue Planning

III. Sales Communications Formats

A. Canned Sales Presentations
B. Written Sales Proposals
C. Writing Effective Proposals
1. Executive Summary
2. Customer Needs and Proposed Solution
3. Seller Profile
4. Pricing and Sales Agreement
5. Implementation and Timetable

D. Evaluating Proposals Before Submission

E. Organized Sales Dialogues

IV. Sales Dialogue Template

A. Section 1: Prospect Information
B. Section 2: Customer Value Proposition
C. Section 3: Sales Call Objective
D. Section 4: Linking Buying Motives, Benefits, Support Information and
Reinforcement Methods
 E. Section 5: Competitive Situation
F. Section 6: Beginning the Sales Dialogue
G. Initiating Contact
H. Section 7: Anticipate Questions and Objectives
I. Section 8: Earn Prospect Commitment
J. Section 9: Build Value through Follow-up Action

V. Engaging the Customer

Exercises

Developing Professional Selling Knowledge

1. Why is sales dialogue and presentation preplanning important?

Sales presentation planning is important because it helps keep the salesperson organized and focused. The key
element to sales presentation planning is the creation of one or more sales call objectives. These objectives are
important because they help the salesperson manage accounts through the sales process and serve as a tool for
measuring performance.

2. Do you see the need for any salesperson to ever use a canned sales presentation?

Canned sales presentations may be effective when the product line is narrow and there is little variation in the
types of value customers derive from the product(s) or the needs the product addresses. In addition, canned
sales presentations may be helpful to inexperienced salespeople or when an organization wants tight control
over the information salespeople present.

3. Most salespeople use organized sales dialogues and presentations today. Why?

Most salespeople use organized sales dialogues and presentations because they provide greater flexibility and
interaction with the prospective customer. This form of interaction allows salespeople to learn about their
customers’ needs and then customize solutions to those needs. After all, the customer is interested only in
hearing about how the salesperson’s market offer may solve his or her problem. Using a canned presentation
that, for example, covers all the products’ features may bore, confuse, or otherwise disinterest the customer.

4. Explain why both verbal and written communication are a necessity for a successful salesperson.

Both verbal and written forms of communication are important because each plays a crucial role in the purchase
decision. Verbal communication is important for learning about the customer’s situation and particular needs
and then presenting solutions to those needs in a manner the customer understands. Written communication is
important because it is often perceived as being more credible and creates a permanent record of the claims and
promises the salesperson makes to the prospective customer. Because written communication is much less
flexible, it must clearly convey the intended message. Written and verbal communications are often used
together and should be mutually supportive to maximize the impact of the message and to reduce ambiguity.
5. Explain the key elements of written proposals.

The key elements of written proposals are the executive summary, needs and benefits analysis, company
description, pricing and sales agreement, and suggested action and timetable. The executive summary, usually
limited to two typewritten pages, explains the customer’s problems, the nature of the proposed solution, and the
benefits; it also builds interest in the proposal. The needs and benefits analysis section clearly states the
customer’s needs and then presents the solution with evidence on how it will uniquely address these needs. The
company description offers an overview of the supplier company, emphasizing its capabilities and successes in
providing services to past customers. The pricing and sales agreement officially “asks for the order,” providing
pricing information and delivery options. Finally, the suggested action and timetable explains the steps
necessary for the buyer to complete placing an order.

6. Why is the planning template for sales dialogue and presentation an important tool for today’s
salesperson?

The primary advantage of the planning template for sales dialogue and presentation is that it ensures salespeople
are organized and that they cover all the pertinent content areas when they develop or prepare for a sales
presentation. In addition, a planning template helps the salesperson with the process of uncovering needs and
identifying a customized solution. Finally, the salesperson can use information collected while developing the
planning template for sales dialogue and presentation to learn more about their territories, their customers, and
their performance.

7. Why is it important for a salesperson to establish objectives for each sales call?

It is important for salespeople to establish sales call objectives because doing so keeps them organized, focused,
and goal-directed. Setting multiple sales call objectives (e.g. secondary objectives) helps the salesperson have a
plan to keep the sales moving forward when the primary objective is not met (i.e. a fallback plan). Finally,
having to set sales call objectives reminds salespeople to have a purpose for each sales call, reducing the
likelihood that they will waste their time and their customers’ time.

8. What are characteristics of a well-written customer value proposition?

A good customer value proposition will be a simple statement that clearly directs upcoming sales dialogues by
explaining why a customer would be better off choosing the product of the salesperson and his or her firm. It
should explain only the key benefits for the buyer and avoid listing all of the benefits; at the same time, it
should be as specific as possible on tangible outcomes and relate any product or service dimensions that would
add value to the buyer’s operations. Finally, the customer value proposition should promise only what can be
consistently delivered, keeping in mind that appropriate guarantees can be added as the sales process moves
along.

9. What is the difference between buying motives and benefits?

Buying motives refers to the most important facts from the customer’s perspective in making a purchase
decision. Buying motives are that which will motivate the buyer to make a purchase, and they may be rational
or emotional or a combination of both. Benefits, on the other hand, describe added value for the customer—the
favorable outcome derived from a feature. Benefits are the sources of value that address the buyer’s buying
motives. Salespeople should present benefits that, at a minimum, address the buyer’s buying motives.

10. How can salespeople enhance their chances of securing an appointment with a prospect?

Salespeople will be more likely to secure an appointment with a prospect if they follow three simple directives:
give the prospect a reason why an appointment should be granted; request a specific amount of time; and
suggest a specific time for the appointment. In general, salespeople need to show that they recognize the
prospect’s time is valuable.
Group Activity
Preparing for Sales Calls: Using the Internet and the Views of a Sales Professional
Form student teams and have them access a search engine like Yahoo.com. The teams should investigate topics such
as “sales, planning the call” or “sales, precall planning.” Teams prepare a brief report on the best ideas from the
search, then interview a salesperson or sales manager for additional ideas on how to prepare for sales calls. Each
team should present their findings in class. Teams should document sources used in their reports.

Experiential Exercises
Demonstrating the Differences Between Features and Benefits
Objective: Use this exercise to facilitate student understanding of the differences in features and benefits. By using
a product they are familiar with, students gain confidence in converting features into benefits.

Time Required: Students will need only a few minutes to prepare, either before or in class. The demonstrations will
vary in length, but each can be completed in less than five minutes.

Teaching Tip: To get an interesting mix of products, give the students advance notice of this assignment, and stress
that they must use the product to demonstrate features and benefits. Have students bring a product to class and
demonstrate three features and three related benefits to the class. Alternatively, students can pair up for this exercise,
then switch buyer-seller roles. Class discussion should follow presentations with a focus on how to improve the
explanation of features and benefits. For example, if the feature/benefit explanation was too complicated or not
clear, how could the presenter improve the explanation?

Linking Buying Motives to Benefits and Reinforcing Benefits

Objective: Students gain experience in selecting benefits that relate to the buyer’s key motives, and they learn how
to support benefit claims with information and sales support materials. Note that this exercise utilizes the Sales
Dialogue and Presentation PlanningTemplate as shown in Exhibit 6. 4 and discussed on page 140.

Time Required: Two hours outside of class, plus a ten minute presentation in class.

Teaching Tip: Limit the in class presentation to ten minutes per team rather than insisting that all benefits are
included in the presentation. If the team demonstrates that they understand how to complete Section 4 of the Sales
Dialogue and Presentation Planning Template (Exhibit 6.4) for a few benefits, they can do the same for as many
benefits as might be appropriate in a sales situation.

Have student teams select a real product to be sold to a real prospect. The teams identify at least two key buying
motives for the prospect. The buying motives must be approved by the instructor. Students then complete Section 4
of the Sales Dialogue and Presentation Planning Template. This requires linking benefits to the buying motives,
identifying information to support claims made for each benefit, and specifying appropriate methods for reinforcing
verbal content. Teams present a ten-minute briefing to the class for discussion and feedback.

Video Exercise
Planning Sales Dialogues and Presentations
Scene 2B, A Helping Hand, run time 2:20 minutes.

Sales dialogues may follow or precede other sales communication such as a written proposal. Review this sales call
and look for how Jim’s previous communication is used in this sales dialog.

Ask your students:

1. How does Jim use both verbal and written communication to effectively present his product?

Jim uses a combination of verbal and nonverbal communication to help get his ideas across. Jim’s nonverbal
communication is, in general, positive and appropriate for what he is communicating. He smiles periodically,
 uses appropriate hand gestures, maintains an attentive body posture, uses appropriate voice pitch, speaks at an
acceptable rate, and makes regular eye contact with the buyer.

Jim’s verbal communication first focuses on establishing report, then reviewing the proposal, and then shifts to
questioning as soon as he learns of the buyer’s concerns about the proposal. Jim asks questions to determine the
reason for resistance, and to uncover additional information about the buyer’s needs. He also gains the buyer’s
commitment to review an addendum to the sales proposal (which he will deliver the next day).

2. Comment on the buyer benefits and motives in the scene.

The buyer benefits include a managed security system, the possibility of help identifying candidates to fill a
systems security position, and the sense of comfort and security that comes from working with a company that
has a good reputation and a strong track record of success. The buyer is communicating a mix of needs
weighted heavily by situational needs. The primary situational need is the need to have a system in place ASAP
because the new software product release date is rapidly approaching. The second need is the need for a
relatively low cost system. This sort of need is based in both situational and functional needs. Other needs-
bases (i.e., social, knowledge, and psychological) may be woven in here as well, but it’s hard to tell because the
clip is relatively short.

Chapter 6 Case

Nimblefoot
Background
Nimblefoot is a manufacturer of women's running shoes, which are sold through major sporting goods chain stores
and specialty stores. Nimblefoot has targeted Trailrunner, a regional specialty store chain as a potential prospect for
its latest product. Nimblefoot's sales representative, Bradley Jackson, hopes to replace a competitor's product in the
Trailrunner stores. Bradley has begun planning his upcoming sales call on Susan Holloway, head buyer at
Trailrunner. At a recent trade show, Bradley had a brief conversation with Susan and learned that Trailrunner's
management is interested in improving the profitability of the chain. Further, Susan made it clear that Trailrunner
would only be interested in high-quality products.

Current Situation
Bradley and his sales manager, Ashley Zamora, have
been discussing the plans for the upcoming call on
Trailrunner. Ashley asked Bradley to give her a
summary of Trailrunner's key buying motives and the
related benefits that Nimblefoot could offer. In
addition, Ashley wanted to review the information
that would be required to support any claims made for
the benefits, as well as additional ideas for how to
reinforce the verbal content of Nimblefoot's sales
message. Bradley supplied Ashley with the requested
information, as shown in Exhibit A. Ashley is now
reading over Exhibit A and plans to give Bradley
some feedback tomorrow morning.

1. In the role of Ashley Zamora, what specific comments and suggestions do you have for Bradley Jackson?
Students’ answer will vary depending their grasp of the material and their own individual preferences for visual
aids. Nevertheless, the students should allude to one or more of the following bits of feedback:
 Improve Profitability – Reinforcement of Verbal Content – Considering using charts/graphs to illustrate
increased profitability. Provide a time frame.
High Quality Product – Related Nimblefoot Benefits are closer to features than benefits (in terms of benefits for
Trailrunner). Support Information – The Nimblefoot website isn’t as credible as independent third party
sources. Reinforcement of Verbal Content – Running World magazine is good; customer interviews are okay,
but not independent (because they are on the website and likely generated by Nimblefooot.

2. Should a customer value proposition be developed before completing the information in Exhibit A?
Yes, the general customer proposition should have been developed before completing the information in Exhibit
A. However, as a sales process progresses, the value proposition may become more customized to the
individual prospect. In preparing for a sales call in which solutions (to needs previously uncovered) will be
presented, a more customized value proposition can be developed using value-driven benefits directly
associated with the solutions to be presented.

Role Play
Characters: Ashley Zamora, sales manager, and Bradley Jackson, sales representative

Scene:
Location—Ashley Zamora's office; Action—One student plays the role of Ashley Zamora, and one student plays the
role of Bradley Jackson. Ashley has told Bradley that she thinks it would be good exercise to act out the presentation
of the key benefits shown in section four of the template. She said to Bradley "I will act like the Trailrunner buyer,
and you try to convince me that your benefits are significant. Be as specific as you can."

Questions (for class discussion after the role play)

After completing the role play, address these questions:
1. What were the strengths of Bradley Jackson's performance?

2. How could Bradley's performance be improved?

3. How important is sales call planning in determining sales call performance?

Chapter 06 Role Play

Kindle versus Nook

Background
For this role play, students will assume one of three roles: (1) sales representative for Amazon's Kindle; (2) sales
representative for Barnes and Noble's Nook; or (3) a buyer for a major university that is considering the purchase of
e-readers for students. Prior to the role play, all students should conduct a comparison of the features and benefits of
the Kindle and the Nook. To do the comparison, begin by using a search engine such as Google. Enter "Kindle vs.
Nook" to find features and benefits of both products.

Role Play:
Characters: One Kindle representative, one Nook representative, and a buyer for the university

Scene 1: Location—The buyer's office; Action—Both sellers present their products to the buyer with a focus on
explaining their product's benefits to the buyer.

Questions (for class discussion after the role play)

After completing the role play, address the following questions:
1. Did the sellers demonstrate that they knew the difference between features and benefits?

2. Did the sellers have sufficient information to be convincing?

3. Can you suggest additional ways that the sellers could improve their sales communications?
Chapter 6 – Continuing Case

Custom Product, Custom Presentation

During the past three months, Brenda had improved her prospecting process. She was identifying more prospects
that represented better sales opportunities. Brenda knew that it is important to plan her sales calls in advance to
maximize the time she spent in face-to-face selling. In this selling environment, most customers were not interested
in all of the features of Brenda’s products. Brenda had to determine what was important to each customer, and
customize her presentations accordingly. Further, she had to clearly communicate the benefits of her products, and
not overwhelm potential buyers with too much technical language. Assume that Brenda has an appointment with
EFP, a non-profit organization that raises money to promote environmentally friendly practices such as recycling.
The organization uses email, Web-based communications, and direct mail campaigns to reach potential donors. EFP
currently uses an older-generation analog copier. Brenda hopes to sell EFP a modern digital copier that offers
several advantages over the analog copier currently in use.

Questions

1. Using an Internet search engine such as Google, find the general benefits of digital copiers over analog
copiers. You might enter “benefits of digital copiers” in the search engine, or examine data from copier
providers such as Ricoh, Canon, or Xerox to find these benefits. List 6 - 8 potential benefits of a digital
copier to EFP.

• Reduces the need for equipment – saving money (Multifunction – serves as printer, copier, and fax).
• Time saving – Documents may be distributed electronically.
• Reduce expenses via lower maintenance costs (fewer moving parts to break down)
• Reduce expenses via lower production costs (documents may be distributed electronically, saving paper).
• Is consistent with sustainability initiatives.
• Higher quality output (digital technology produced a superior reproduction)

2. From the listing developed in # 1, select four benefits. For each benefit, write a sentence or two that
Brenda might use to communicate these benefits during her sales call with EFP.

Students’ answers will vary but each should be tied to EFP’s needs. Here is an example: The copier handles
multiple functions and will save you time and money. You can create your donor material and use the copier to
send digital copies to your donors via email, reproduce the material for use in the mailer, or fax the material.
Do you see how this will save you time and money?

3. For the four benefits identified in # 2, describe what information Brenda should have on hand when she
makes the sales call on the EFP buyer. Also describe how this information would be best communicated,
i.e., what support materials will Brenda need to enhance her verbal communications?

Students’ answers will vary. Below is an example answer:

Assuming a live demo isn’t possible, Brenda should have a video clip (view on her laptop) showing how the
copier can perform all the functions. In addition, she should have a colorful diagram/chart showing how the
copier may perform all the functions (in case there is a problem with using the laptop). Finally, Brenda should
have testimonials and data (table, chart, graph) supporting the time and money savings. Use of the testimonials
vs. the data would depend on the communication style of the buyer.

4. Assume that the buyer acknowledged interest in at least two of benefits identified in # 2. Write a realistic
buyer-seller dialogue of Brenda’s interaction with the EFP buyer concerning these benefits.

Students’ answers will vary. Below is a sample dialogue.

Brenda: Previously you mentioned you create donor material and have one person work on distributing the
material via email, and another person copying the material for distribution via a mailer. And that
having two people doing the work is costly, is that right?

Buyer: Yes.

Brenda: Our copier uses digital technology, meaning it scans the image of the original into memory and
stores it as an electronic file. The benefit to you is that once scanned, the document can be sent
out via email while it’s being copied for use in a mailer. This will reduce your labor cost and
you’ll be able to get the materials out faster.

Buyer: Okay, but how much time will we save?

Brenda: The Davidson Group conducted a study of the performance of digital copiers compared to
traditional (analog) copiers. As you can see from this graphic, they concluded that digital copiers
reduced the time on task by 35%. How would a 35% reduction in the amount of time spent on
these mailers benefit you?

Buyer: Well, we could . . . .

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 CHAPTER VIII.

A MORMON CARAVAN.
Still, as we rode along, the same rich, tranquil days of October;
the air always potable gold, and every breath nepenthe.
Early on one of the fairest of afternoons when all were fairest, we
reached Fort Bridger. Bridger had been an old hunter, trapper, and by
and by that forlorn hope of civilization, the holder of an Indian
trading-post. The spot is better known now. It was there that that
miserable bungle and blunder of an Administration more fool, if that
be possible, than knave,—the Mormon Expedition in 1858,—took
refuge, after its disasters on the Sweetwater.
At the moment of our arrival, Bridger’s Fort had just suffered
capture. Its owner was missing. The old fellow had deemed himself
the squatter sovereign of that bleak and sere region. He had built an
adobe mud fort, with a palisade, on a sweep of plain a degree less
desert than the deserts hard by. That oasis was his oasis, so he
fondly hoped; that mud fort, his mud fort; those willows and alders,
his thickets; and that trade, his trade.
But Bridger was one man, and he had powerful neighbors. It was
a case of “O si annulus iste!”—a Naboth’s-vineyard case. The
Mormons did not love the rugged mountaineer; that worthy Gentile,
in turn, thought the saints no better than so many of the ungodly.
The Mormons coveted oasis, fort, thicket, and trade. They accused
the old fellow of selling powder and ball to hostile Indians,—to
Walker, chief of the Utes, a scion, no doubt, of the Hookey Walker
branch of that family. Very likely he had done so. At all events, it was
a good pretext. So, in the name of the Prophet, and Brigham,
successor of the Prophet, the Latter-Day Saints had made a raid
upon the post. Bridger escaped to the mountains. The captors
occupied the Gentile’s property, and spoiled his goods.
Jake Shamberlain told us this story, not without some sympathy
for the exile.
“It’s olluz so,” says Jake; “Paul plants, and Apollyon gets the
increase. Not that Bridger’s like Paul, any more’n we’re like Apollyon;
but we’re goan to have all the cider off his apple trees.”
“I’m sorry old Bridger has come to grief,” said Brent to me, as we
rode over the plain toward the fort. “He was a rough, but worth all
the Latter-Day Saints this side of Armageddon. Biddulph and I
stayed a week with him last summer, when we came from the
mountains about Luggernel Alley.”
“How far is Luggernel Alley from this spot?”
“Fifty miles or so to the south and east. I almost fancy I recognize
it in that slight notch in the line of the blue sierra on the horizon. I
wonder if I shall ever see it again! If it were not so late, I should
insist upon taking you there now. There is no such gorge in the
world. And the springs, bold, liberal fountains, gushing out on a
glittering greensward! There are several of them, some boiling,
some cold as ice; and one, the Champagne Spring, wastes in the
wilderness the most delicate, sparkling, exhilarating tipple that ever
reddened a lip or freshened a brain.”
“Wait half a century; then you and I will go there by rail, with our
grandchildren, for draughts of the Fountain of Youth.”
“I should like to spend a honeymoon there, if I could find a wife
plucky enough to cross the plains.”
How well I remembered all this conversation afterwards, and not
long afterwards!
We rode up to the fort. A dozen or so of somewhat rubbishy
soldiers, the garrison, were lounging about.
 “Will they expect a countersign,” asked I,—“some slogan of their
vulgarized Islamism?”
“Hardly!” replied Brent. “Only one man in the world can care
about assailing this dismal den. They need not be as ceremonious
with strangers as the Dutchmen are at Ehrenbreitstein and Verona.”
Jake and the main party stopped at the fort. We rode on a
quarter of a mile farther, and camped near a stream, where the
grass was plenteous.
“Fulano and Pumps are in better condition than when we started,”
said I, while we were staking them out for a long feed. “The
mustangs have had all the drudgery; these aristocrats must be set to
do their share soon.”
“They are in prime racing order. If we had had them in training
for three months for a steeple-chase, or a flight, or a Sabine
adventure, or a rescue, they could not be in better trim than this
moment. I suppose their time to do their duty must be at hand, they
seem so ardent for it.”
We left our little caballada nibbling daintily at the sweetest spires
of self-cured hay, and walked back to the fort.
We stood there chatting with the garrison. Presently Brent’s quick
eye caught some white spots far away on the slope of the prairie,
like sails on the edge of a dreamy, sunny sea.
“Look!” said he, “there comes a Salt Lake emigration train.”
“Yes,” said a Mormon of the garrison, “that’s Elder Sizzum’s train.
Their forerunner came in this morning to choose the camping-spot.
There they be! two hundred ox-teams, a thousand Saints, bound for
the Promised Land.”
He walked off to announce the arrival, whistling, “Jordan is a hard
road to travel.”
I knew of Sizzum as the most seductive orator and foreign
propagandist of Mormonism. He had been in England some time,
very successful at the good work. The caravans we had already met
were of his proselytes. He himself was coming on with the last train,
the one now in view, and steering for Fort Bridger.
As we stood watching, the lengthening file of white-hooded
wagons crept slowly into sight. They came forward diagonally to our
line of view, travelling apart at regular intervals, like the vessels of a
well-ordered convoy. Now the whole fleet dipped into a long hollow,
and presently the leader rose slowly up over the ridge, and then slid
over the slope, like a sail winging down the broad back of a surge.
So they made their way along over the rolling sweep of the distance.
“Beautiful!” said Brent. “See how the white canvas goldens in this
rich October haze. Such scenes are the poetry of prairie life.”
“I am too sorry for the crews, to enjoy the sunlit sails.”
“Yes, the safer their voyage, the surer their wreck in that gulf of
superstition beyond the mountains.”
“Perhaps we waste sympathy. A man who has no more wit than
to believe the trash they teach, has no business with anything but
stupid drudgery. He will never suffer with discovering his faith to be
a delusion.”
“You may say that of a grown man; but think of the children,—to
grow up in desecrated homes, and never know the close and tender
influence of family nurture.”
“The state owes them an interference and an education.”
“So it does; and the women protection from polygamy, whether
they will or no.”
“Certainly. Polygamy makes woman a slave either by force, or
influence stronger than force. The state exists only to secure the
blessings of liberty to every soul within its borders, and so must free
her.”
“Good logic, but not likely, quite yet, to guide legislation in our
country.”
 “This is Sizzum’s last train; if the women here are no more
fascinating than their shabby sisters of its forerunners, we shall carry
our hearts safe home.”
“I cannot laugh about that,” said Brent. “My old dread revives,
whenever I see one of these caravans, that there may be in it some
innocent girl too young to choose, carried off by a fanatic father or
guardian. Think of the misery to a woman of any refinement!”
“But we have not seen any such.”
Larrap and Murker here joined us, and, overhearing the last
remarks, began to speak in a very disgusting tone of the women we
had seen in previous trains.
“I don’t wish to hear that kind of stuff,” said Brent, turning sternly
upon Larrap.
“It’s a free country, and I shall say what I blame please,” the
fellow said, with a grin.
“Then say it by yourself, and away from me.”
“You’re blame squimmidge,” said Larrap, and added a beastly
remark.
Brent caught him by the collar, and gave him a shake.
Murker put his hand to a pistol and looked “Murder, if I dared!”
“None of that,” said I, stepping before him.
Jake Shamberlain, seeing the quarrel, came running up. “Now,
Brother Brent,” said Jake, “no shindies in this here Garden of
Paradise. If the gent has made a remark what teches you apologies
is in order, an he’ll make all far and squar.”
Brent gave the greasy man a fling.
He went down. Then he got up, with a trace of Bridger’s claim on
his red shirt.
“Yer needn’t be so blame hash with a feller,” said he. “I didn’t
mean no offence.”
 “Very well. Learn to talk like a man, and not like a brute!” said
Brent.
The two men walked off together, with black looks.
“You look disappointed, Shamberlain,” said I. “Did you expect a
battle?”
“Ther’s no fight in them fellers,” said Jake; “but ef they can serve
you a mean trick they’ll do it; and they’re ambushin’ now to look in
the dixonary and see what it is. You’d better keep the lariats of that
black and that gray tied round your legs to-night, and every good
horsethief night while they’re along. They may be jolly dogs, and let
their chances slide at cards, but my notion is they’re layin’ low for
bigger hauls.”
“Good advice, Jake; and so we will.”
By this time the head wagons of Elder Sizzum’s train had crept
down upon the level near us. For the length of a long mile behind,
the serpentine line held its way. On the yellow rim of the world, with
softened outlines against the hazy horizon, the rear wagons were
still climbing up into view. The caravan lay like a slowly writhing
hydra over the land. Along its snaky bends, where dragon-wings
should be, were herds of cattle, plodding beside the “trailing-footed”
teams, and little companies of Saints lounging leisurely toward their
evening’s goal, their unbuilt hostelry on the plain.
Presently the hydra became a two-headed monster. The foremost
wagon bent to the right, the second led off to the left. Each
successor, as it came to the point of divergence, filed to the right or
left alternately. The split creature expanded itself. The two wings
moved on over a broad grassy level north of the fort, describing in
regular curve a great ellipse, a third of a mile long, half as much
across.
On either flank the march was timed and ordered with the
precision of practice. This same manœuvre had been repeated every
day of the long journey. Precisely as the foremost teams met at the
upper end of the curve, the two hindmost were parting at the lower.
The ellipse was complete. It locked itself top and bottom. The train
came to a halt. Every wagon of the two hundred stopped close upon
the heels of its file leader.
A tall man, half pioneer, half deacon, in dress and mien, galloped
up and down the ring. This was Sizzum, so the by-standers informed
us. At a signal from him, the oxen, two and three yoke to a wagon,
were unyoked, herded, and driven off to wash the dust from their
protestant nostrils, and graze over the russet prairie. They huddled
along, a great army, a thousand strong. Their brown flanks grew
ruddy with the low sunshine. A cloud of golden dust rose and hung
over them. The air was loud with their lowing. Relieved from their
drags, the herd frisked away with unwieldy gambolling. We turned to
the camp, that improvised city in the wilderness.
Nothing could be more systematic than its arrangement. Order is
welcome in the world. Order is only second to beauty. It is, indeed,
the skeleton of beauty. Beauty seeks order, and becomes its raiment.
Every great white-hooded, picturesque wagon of the Mormon
caravan was in its place. The tongue of each rested on the axle of its
forerunner, or was ranged upon the grass beneath. The ellipse
became a fort and a corral. Within, the cattle could be safely herded.
Marauding Redskins would gallop about in vain. Nothing
stampedable there. Scalping Redskins, too, would be baffled. They
could not make a dash through the camp, whisk off a scalp, and
vanish untouched. March and encampment both had been
marshalled with masterly skill.
“Sizzum,” Brent avowed to me, sotto voce, “may be a blind guide
with ditchward tendencies in faith. He certainly knows how to handle
his heretics in the field. I have seen old tacticians, Maréchales and
Feldzeugmeisters, in Europe, with El Dorado on each shoulder, and
Golconda on the left breast, who would have tied up that train into
knots that none of them would be Alexander enough to cut.”
 CHAPTER IX.

SIZZUM AND HIS HERETICS.

No sooner had this nomad town settled itself quietly for the night,
than a town-meeting collected in the open of the amphitheatre.
“Now, brethren,” says Shamberlain to us, “ef you want to hear
exhortin’ as runs without stoppin’, step up and listen to the Apossle
of the Gentiles. Prehaps,” and here Jake winked perceptibly, “you’ll
be teched, and want to jine, and prehaps you wont. Ef you’re docyle
you’ll be teched, ef you’re bulls of Bashan you wont be teched.”
“How did you happen to be converted yourself, Jake?” Brent
asked. “You’ve never told me.”
“Why, you see I was naturally of a religious nater, and I’ve tried
’em all, but I never fell foul of a religion that had real proved
miracles, till I seed a man, born dumb, what was cured by the
Prophet Joseph looking down his throat and tellin’ his palate to
speak up,—and it did speak up, did that there palate, and went on
talkin’ most oncommon. It’s onbeknown tongues it talks, suthin like
gibberidge; but Joseph said that was how the tongues sounded in
the Apossles’ time to them as hadn’t got the interruption of tongues.
I struck my flag to that there miracle. I’d seen ’em gettin’ up the
sham kind, when I was to the Italian convent, and I knowed the
fourth-proof article. I may talk rough about this business, but
Brother Brent knows I’m honest about it.”
Jake led us forward, and stationed us in posts of honor before the
crowd of auditors.
 Presently Sizzum appeared. He had taken time to tone down the
pioneer and develop the deacon in his style, and a very sleek
personage he had made of himself. He was clean shaved; clean
shaving is a favorite coxcombry of the deacon class. His long black
hair, growing rank from a muddy skin, was sleekly put behind his
ears. A large white blossom of cravat expanded under his nude,
beefy chin, and he wore a black dress-coat, creased with its recent
packing. Except that his pantaloons were thrust into boots with the
maker’s name (Abel Cushing, Lynn, Mass.) stamped in gold on a
scarlet morocco shield in front, he was in correct go-to-meetin’
costume,—a Chadband of the plains.
He took his stand, and began to fulmine over the assemblage. His
manner was coarse and overbearing, with intervals of oily
persuasiveness. He was a big, powerful man, without one atom of
delicacy in him,—a fellow who never could take a flower or a gentle
heart into his hand without crushing it by a brutal instinct. A
creature with such an amorphous beak of a nose, such a heavy-
lipped mouth, and such wilderness of jaw, could never perceive the
fine savor of any delicate thing. Coarse joys were the only joys for
such a body; coarse emotions, the pleasures of force and
domination, the only emotions crude enough for such a soul.
His voice was as repulsive as his mien and manner. That badly
modelled nose had an important office in his oratory. Through it he
hailed his auditors to open their hearts, as a canal-boatman hails the
locks with a canal horn of bassoon calibre. But sometimes, when he
wished to be seductive, his sentences took the channel of his mouth,
and his great lips rolled the words over like fat morsels. Pah! how
the recollection of the fellow disgusts me! And yet he had an
unwholesome fascination, which compelled us to listen. I could
easily understand how he might overbear feeble minds, and wheedle
those that loved flattery. He had some education. Travel had
polished his base metal, so that it shone well enough to deceive the
vulgar or the credulous. He did not often allow himself the broad
coarseness of his brother preachers in the church.
 Shall I let him speak for himself? Does any one wish to hear the
inspirations of the last faith humanity has chosen for its guide?
No. Such travesty of true religion is very sorry comedy, very
tragical farce. Vulgar rant and cant, and a muddle of texts and
dogmas, are disgusting to hear, and would be weariness to repeat.
Sizzum’s sermon suited his mixed character. He was Aaron and
Joshua, high-priest and captain combined. He made his discourse
bulletin for to-day, general orders for to-morrow. He warned against
the perils of disobedience. He raved of the joys and privileges of
Latter-Day Saintship on earth and in heaven. He heaped vindictive
and truculent anathemas upon Gentiles. He gave his audience to
understand that he held the keys of the kingdom; if they yielded to
him without question, they were safe in life and eternity; if they
murmured, they were cast into outer darkness. It was terrible to see
the man’s despotism over his proselytes. A rumble of Amens from
the crowd greeted alike every threat and every promise.
Sizzum’s discourse lasted half an hour. He dismissed his audience
with an Amen, and an injunction to keep closer to the train on the
march to-morrow, and not be “rabbling off to catch grasshoppers
because they were bigger and handsomer than the Lancashire kind.”
“And this is one of the religions of the nineteenth century, and
such a man is its spokesman,” said Brent to me, as the meeting
broke up, and we strolled off alone to inspect the camp.
“It is a shame to all churches that they have not trained men to
judge of evidence, and so rendered such a delusion impossible.”
“But Christianity tolerates, and ever reveres, myths and mythic
histories; and such toleration and reverence offer premiums on the
invention of new mythologies like this.”
“We, in our churches, teach that phenomena can add authority to
truth; we necessarily invite miracle-mongers, Joe Smiths, Pio Nonos,
to produce miracles to sustain lies.”
 “I suppose,” said Brent, “that superstition must be the handmaid
of religion, except in minds very holy, or very brave and thorough in
study. By and by, when mankind is educated to know that theology
is a science, to be investigated and tested like a science, Mormonism
and every like juggle will become forever impossible.”
“Certainly; false religions always pretend to a supernatural origin
and a fresh batch of mysteries. Let Christianity discard its mysteries,
and impostors will have no educated credulity to aid them.”
So Brent and I commented upon the Sizzum heresy and its
mouthpiece. We abhorred the system, and were disgusted with its
apostle, as a tempter and a knave. Yet we could not feel any close
personal interest in the class he deluded. They seemed too ignorant
and doltish to need purer spiritual food.
Bodily food had been prepared by the women while the men
listened to Sizzum’s grace before meat. A fragrance of baking bread
had pervaded the air. A thousand slices of fat pork sizzled in two
hundred frying-pans, and water boiled for two hundred coffee or tea
pots. Saints cannot solely live on sermons.
Brent and I walked about to survey the camp. We stopped
wherever we found the emigrants sociable, and chatted with them.
They were all eager to know how much length of journey remained.
“We’re comin’ to believe, some of us,” said an old crone, with a
wrinkle for every grumble of her life, “that we’re to be forty year in
the wilderness, like the old Izzerullites. I wouldn’t have come,
Samwell, if I’d known what you was bringin’ me to.”
“There’s a many of us wouldn’t have come, mother,” rejoined
“Samwell,” a cowed man of anxious look, “if we’d known as much as
we do now.”
Samwell glanced sadly at his dirty, travel-worn children, at work
at mud pies and dust vol-au-vents. His dowdy wife broke off the
colloquy by announcing, in a tone that she must have learned from a
rattlesnake, that the loaf was baked, the bacon was fried, and
supper shouldn’t wait for anybody’s talking.
 All the emigrants were English. Lancashire their accent and dialect
announced, and Lancashire they told us was their home in the old
step-mother country.
Step-mother, indeed, to these her children! No wonder that they
had found life at home intolerable! They were the poorest class of
townspeople from the great manufacturing towns,—penny
tradesmen, indoor craftsmen, factory operatives,—a puny, withered
set of beings; hardly men, if man means strength; hardly women, if
woman means beauty. Their faces told of long years passed in the
foul air of close shops, or work-rooms, or steamy, oily, flocculent
mills. All work and no play had been their history. No holidays, no
green grass, no flowers, no freshness,—nothing but hard, ill-paid
drudgery, with starvation standing over the task and scourging them
on. There were children among them already aged and wrinkled,
ancient as the crone, Samwell’s mother, for any childish gayety they
showed. Poor things! they had been for years their twelve, fourteen,
sixteen hours at work in stifling mills, when they should have been
tumbling in the hay, chasing butterflies, expanding to sunshine and
open air.
“We have not seen,” said Brent, “one hearty John Bull, or buxom
Betsy Bull, in the whole caravan.”
“They look as if husks and slops had been their meat and drink,
instead of beef and beer.”
“Beef and beer belong to fellows that have red in their cheeks
and guffaws in their throats, not to these lean, pale, dreary
wretches.”
“The saints’ robes seem as sorry as their persons,” said I. “No
watchman on the hill-tops of their Sion will hail, ‘Who are these in
bright array?’ when they heave in sight!”
“They have a right to be way-worn, after their summer of
plodding over these dusty wastes.”
“Here comes a group in gayer trim. See!—actually flounces and
parasols!”
 Several young women of the Blowsalind order, dressed in very
incongruous toggery of stained and faded silks, passed us. They
seemed to be on a round of evening visits, and sheltered their
tanned faces against the October sunshine with ancient fringed
parasols. Their costume had a queer effect in the camp of a Mormon
caravan at Fort Bridger. They were in good spirits, and went into
little panics when they saw Brent in his Indian rig, and then into “Lor
me!” and “Bless us!” when the supposed Pawnee was discovered to
be a handsome pale-face.
“Perhaps we waste sympathy,” said Brent, “on these people. Why
are not they better off here, and likely to be more comfortable in
Utah than in the slums of Manchester?”
“Drudgery for drudgery, slavery for slavery, barren as the Salt
Lake country is, and rough the lot of pioneers, I have no doubt they
will be. But then the religion!”
“I do not defend that; but what has England’s done for them to
make them regret it? Of what use to these poor proletaires have the
cathedrals been, or the sweet country churches, or the quiet
cloisters of Oxford and Cambridge? I cannot wonder that they have
given an easy belief to Mormonism,—an energetic, unscrupulous
propagandism, offering escape from poverty and social depression,
offering acres for the mere trouble of occupying; promising high
thrones in heaven, and on earth also, if the saints will only gather,
march back, and take possession of their old estates in Illinois and
Missouri.”
We had by this time approached the upper end of the ellipse.
Sizzum, as quartermaster, had done his duty well. The great blue
land-arks, each roofed with its hood of white canvas stretched on
hoops, were in stout, serviceable order, wheels, axles, and bodies.
Within these nomad cottages order or chaos reigned, according to
the tenants. Some people seem only to know the value of rubbish.
They guard old shoes, old hats, cracked mugs, battered tins, as
articles of virtu. Some of the wagons were crowded with such
cherished trash. Some had been lightened of such burdens by the
wayside, and so were snug and orderly nestling-places; but the rat’s-
nests quite outnumbered the wren’s-nests.
A small, neat wagon stood near the head of the train. We might
have merely glanced at it, and passed by, as we had done elsewhere
along the line; but, as we approached, our attention was caught by
Murker and Larrap. They were nosing about, prying into the wagon,
from a little distance. When they caught sight of us, they turned and
skulked away.
“What are those vermin about?” said Brent.
“Selecting, perhaps, a Mormoness to kidnap to-night, or planning
a burglary.”
“I hate to loathe any one as I loathe those fellows. I have known
brutes enough in my life to have become hardened or indifferent by
this time, but these freshen my disgust every time I see them.”
“I thought we had come to a crisis with them this afternoon,
when you collared Larrap.”
“You remember my presentiments about them the night they
joined us. I am afraid they will yet serve us a shabby trick. Their
‘dixonary,’ as Shamberlain called it, of rascality is an unabridged
edition.”
“Such carrion creatures should not be allowed about such a pretty
cage.”
“It is, indeed, a pretty cage. Some neater-handed Phyllis than we
have seen has had the arranging of the household gear within.”
“Yes; the mistress of this rolling mansion has not lost her
domestic ambition. This is quite the model wagon of the train.
Refinement does not disdain Sizzum’s pilgrims; as ecce signum
here!”
“The pretty cage has its bird,—pretty too, perhaps. See! there is
some one behind that shawl screen at the back of the wagon.”
“The bird has divined Murker and Larrap, and is hiding, probably.”
“Come; we have stared long enough; let us walk on.”
 CHAPTER X.

“ELLEN! ELLEN!”
We were turning away from the pretty cage, in order not to
frighten the bird, pretty or not, when an oldish man, tending his fire
at the farther side of the wagon, gave us “Good evening!”
There is a small but ancient fraternity in the world, known as the
Order of Gentlemen. It is a grand old order. A poet has said that
Christ founded it; that he was “the first true gentleman that ever
lived.”
I cannot but distinguish some personages of far-off antiquity as
worthy members of this fellowship. I believe it coeval with man. But
Christ stated the precept of the order, when he gave the whole
moral law in two clauses,—Love to God, and Love to the neighbor.
Whoever has this precept so by heart that it shines through into his
life, enters without question into the inner circles of the order.
But to protect itself against pretenders, this brotherhood, like any
other, has its formulas, its passwords, its shibboleths, even its
uniform. These are external symbols. With some, the symbol is
greater than the thing signified. The thing signified, the principle, is
so beautiful, that the outward sign is enough to glorify any character.
The demeanor of a gentleman—being art, the expression of an idea
in form—can become property, like any art. It may be an heirloom in
an ancient house, like the portrait of the hero who gave a family
name and fame, like the portrait of the maiden martyr or the faithful
wife who made that name beloved, that fame poetry, to all ages.
This precious inheritance, like anything fine and tender, has
sometimes been treated with over care. Guardians have been so
solicitous that a neophyte should not lose his inherited rank in the
order of gentlemen, that they have forgotten to make a man of him.
Culturing the flower, they have not thought to make the stalk sturdy,
or even healthy. The demeanor of a gentleman may be possessed by
a weakling, or even inherited by one whose heart is not worthy of
his manners.
The formulas of this order are not edited; its passwords are not
syllabled; its uniform was never pictured in a fashion-plate, or so
described that a snob could go to his tailor, and say, “Make me the
habit of a gentleman.” But the brothers know each other unerringly
wherever they meet; be they of the inner shrine, gentlemen heart
and life; be they of the outer court, gentlemen in feeling and
demeanor.
No disguise delays this recognition. No strangeness of place and
circumstances prevents it. The men meet. The magnetism passes
between them. All is said without words. Gentleman knows
gentleman by what we name instinct. But observe that this thing,
instinct, is character in its finest, keenest, largest, and most
concentrated action. It is the spirit’s touch.
John Brent and I, not to be deemed intruders, were walking away
from the neat wagon at the upper end of the Mormon camp, when
an oldish man beside the wagon gave us “Good evening.”
“Good evening, gentlemen,” said the wan, gray-haired, shadowy
man before us.
And that was all. It was enough. We knew each other; we him
and he us. Men of the same order, and so brothers and friends.
Here was improbability that made interest at once. Greater to us
than to him. We were not out of place. He was, and in the wrong
company.
Brent and I looked at each other. We had half divined our new
brother’s character at the first glance.
 How legible are some men! All, indeed, that have had, or are to
have, a history, are books in a well-known tongue to trained
decipherers. But some tragedies stare at us with such an earnest
dreariness from helpless faces, that we read with one look. We turn
away sadly. We have comprehended the whole history of past
sorrow; we prophesy the coming despair.
I will not now anticipate the unfinished, melancholy story we read
in this new face. An Englishman, an unmistakable gentleman, and in
a Mormon camp,—there was tragedy enough. Enough to whisper us
both to depart, and not grieve ourselves with vain pity; enough to
imperatively command us to stay and see whether we, as true
knights, foes of wrong, succorers of feebleness, had any business
here. The same instinct that revealed to us one of our order where
he ought not to be, warned us that he might have claims on us, and
we duties toward him.
We returned his salutation.
We were about to continue the conversation, when he opened a
fresh page of the tragedy. He called, in a voice too sad to be
querulous,—a flickering voice, never to be fed vigorous again by any
lusty hope,—
“Ellen! Ellen!”
“What, father dear?”
“The water boils. Please bring the tea, my child.”
“Yes, father dear.”
The answers came from within the wagon. They were the song of
the bird whose nest we had approved. A sad song. A woman’s voice
can tell a long history of sorrow in a single word. This wonderful
instrument, our voice, alters its timbre with every note it yields, as
the face changes with every look, until at last the dominant emotion
is master, and gives quality to tone and character to expression.
It was a sad, sweet voice that answered the old gentleman’s call.
A lady’s voice,—the voice of a high-bred woman, delicate, distinct,
self-possessed. That sound itself was tragedy in such a spot. No
transitory disappointment or distress ever imprinted its mark so
deeply upon a heart’s utterance. The sadness here had been life-
long, had begun long ago, in the days when childhood should have
gone thoughtless, or, if it noted the worth of its moments, should
have known them as jubilee every one;—a sadness so habitual that
it had become the permanent atmosphere of the life. The voice
announced the person, and commanded all the tenderest sympathy
brother-man can give to any sorrowful one in the sisterhood of
woman.
And yet this voice, that with so subtle a revelation gave us the
key of the unseen lady’s history, asked for no pity. There was no
moan in it, and no plaint. Not even a murmur, nor any rebel
bitterness or sourness for defeat. The undertone was brave. If not
hopeful, still resolute. No despair could come within sound of that
sweet music of defiance. The tones that challenge Fate were
subdued away; but not the tones that calmly answer, “No surrender,”
to Fate’s untimely pæan. It was a happy thing to know that,
sorrowful as the life might be, here was an impregnable soul.
There was a manner of half command and half dependence in the
father’s call to his daughter,—a weak nature, still asserting the
control it could not sustain over a stronger. And in her response an
indulgence of this feeble attempt at authority.
Does all this seem much to find in the few simple words we had
heard? The analysis might be made infinitely more thorough. Every
look, tone, gesture of a man is a symbol of his complete nature. If
we apply the microscope severely enough, we can discern the fine
organism by which the soul sends itself out in every act of the being.
And the more perfectly developed the creature, the more significant,
and yet the more mysterious, is every habit, and every motion
mightier than habit, of body or soul.
In an instant, the lady so sweetly heralded stepped from beneath
the hood of the wagon, and sprang to the ground in more busy and
cheerful guise than her voice had promised.
 Again the same subtle magnetism between her and us. We could
not have been more convinced of her right to absolute respect and
consideration if she had entered to us in the dusky light of a rich
drawing-room, or if we had been presented in due form at a picnic
of the grandest world, with far other scenery than this of a “desart
idle,” tenanted for the moment by a Mormon caravan. The lady, like
her father, felt that we were gentlemen, and therefore would
comprehend her. She saluted us quietly. There was in her manner a
tacit and involuntary protest against circumstances, just enough for
dignity. A vulgar woman would have snatched up and put on
clumsily a have-seen-better-days air. This lady knew herself, and
knew that she could not be mistaken for other than she was. Her
base background only made her nobility more salient.
She did not need any such background, nor the contrast of the
drudges and meretricious frights of the caravan. She could have
borne full light without any shade. A woman fit to stand peer among
the peerless.
We could not be astonished at this apparition. We had divined her
father rightly, as it afterward proved. Her voice has already half
disclosed her character. Let her face continue the development. We
had already heard her called by her Christian name, Ellen. That
seemed to bring us, from the beginning, into a certain intimacy with
the woman as woman, sister, daughter, and to subordinate the
circumstances of the life, to be in future suggested by the social
name, to the life itself.
Ellen, then, the unknown lady of the Mormon caravan, was a
high-bred beauty. Englishwomen generally lack the fine edge of such
beauty as hers. She owed her dark fairness, perhaps, to a Sicilian
bride, whom her Norman ancestor had pirated away from some old
playground of Proserpine, and brought with him to England when he
came there as conqueror. Her nose was not quite aquiline.
Positive aquiline noses should be cut off. They are ugly; they are
immoral; they are sensual; they love money; they enjoy others’
misery. The worst birds have hooked beaks; and so the worst men,
the eagles and vultures of the race. Cut off the beaks; they betoken
a cruel pounce, a greedy clutch, and a propensity to carrion. Save
the exceptions, but extirpate the brood.
This lady’s nose was sensitive and proud. It is well when a face
has its share of pride in the nose. Then the lips can give themselves
solely to sweetness and archness. Besides, pride, or, if the word is
dreaded, a conscious and resolute personality, should be the
characteristic of a face. The nose should express this quality. Above,
the eyes may changefully flash intelligence; below, the mouth may
smile affection; the cheeks may give balance and equability; the chin
may show the cloven dimple of a tender and many-sided, or the
point of a single-hearted and concentrated nature; the brow, a non-
committal feature, may look wise or wiseacre; but every one of them
is only tributary to the nose, standing royally in the midst, and with
dignity presiding over its wayward realm.
Halt! My business is to describe a heroine,—not to discuss
physiognomy, with her face for a type.
As I said, her nose was sensitive and proud. There might have
once been scorn in the curve of her nostril. Not now. Sorrow and
pity had educated away the scorn, as they had the tones of
challenge from her voice. Firmness, self-respect, latent indignation,
remained untouched. A strong woman, whose power was intense
and passionate. Calm, till the time came, and then flame. Beware of
arousing her! Not that there was revenge in her face. No; no stab or
poison there. But she was a woman to die by an act of will, rather
than be wronged. She was one who could hold an insulter by a
steady look, while she grew paler, paler, purer, purer, with a more
unearthly pureness, until she had crushed the boiling blood back into
her heart, and stood before the wretch white and chill as a statue,
marble-dead.
What a woman to meet in a Mormon caravan! And yet how able
to endure whatever a dastard Fate might send to crush her there!
 Her hair was caught back, and severely chided out of its wish to
rebel and be as beautiful as it knew was its desert. It was tendril
hair, black enough to show blackness against Fulano’s shoulder.
Chide her locks as she might, they still insisted upon flinging out
here and there a slender curling token of their gracefulness, to prove
what it might be if she would but let them have their sweet and
wilful will.
Her eyes were gray, with violet touches. Her eyebrows defined
and square. If she had had passionate or pleading dark eyes,—the
eyes that hardly repress their tears for sorrow or for joy,—and the
temperament that such eyes reveal, she would long ago have
fevered or wept herself to death. No woman could have looked at
the disgusts of that life of hers through tears, and lived. The gray
eyes meant steadiness, patience, hope without flinching, and power
to master fate, or if not to master, to defy.
She was somewhat pale, thin, and sallow. Plodding wearily and
drearily over those dusty wastes toward exile could not make her a
merry Nut-Brown Maid. Only her thin, red lips proved that there
were still blushes lurking out of sight.
A mature woman; beyond girlhood, body and soul. With all her
grave demeanor, she could not keep down the wiles of gracefulness
that ever bubbled to the surface. If she could but be her happy self,
what a fair world she would suddenly create about her!
She was dressed in rough gray cloth, as any lady might be for a
journey. She was evidently one whose resolute neatness repels
travel-stains. After the tawdry, draggled silks of the young women
we had just seen, her simplicity was charmingly fresh. Could she and
they be of the same race of beings? They were apart as far as
coarse from fine, as silvern from brazen. To see her here among this
horde was a horror in itself. No horror the less, that she could not
blind herself to her position and her fate. She could not fail to see
what a bane was beauty here. That she had done so was evident.
She had essayed by severe plainness of dress to erase the lady from
her appearance. A very idle attempt! There she was, do what she
would, her beauty triumphing over all the wrong she did to it for
duty’s sake.
All these observations I made with one glance. Description seems
idle when one remembers how eyes can see at a flash what it took
æons to prepare for and a lifetime to form.
Brent and I exchanged looks. This was the result of our fanciful
presentiments. Here was visible the woman we had been dreading
to find. It still seemed an impossible vision. I almost believed that
the old gentleman’s blanket would rise with him and his daughter,
like the carpet of Fortunatus, and transport them suddenly away,
leaving us beside a Mormon wagon in Sizzum’s camp and in the
presence of a frowzy family cooking a supper of pork.
I looked again and again. It was all real. There was the neat,
comfortable wagon; there was the feeble, timid old gentleman,
pottering about; there was this beautiful girl, busy with her tea, and
smiling tenderly over her father.
 CHAPTER XI.

FATHER AND DAUGHTER.

“Come, gentlemen,” said the father, in a lively way. “We are all
campaigners. Sit down and take a cup of tea with us. No ceremony.
A la guerre, comme à la guerre. I cannot give you Sèvres porcelain.
I am afraid even my delf is a little cracked; but we’ll fancy it whole
and painted with roses. Now plenty of tea, Ellen dear. Guests are too
rare not to be welcomed with our very best. Besides, I expect
Brother Sizzum, after his camp duties are over.”
It was inexpressibly dreary, this feeble conviviality. In the old
gentleman’s heart it was plain that disappointment and despondency
were the permanent tenants. His gayety seemed only a mockery,—a
vain essay to delude himself into the thought that he could be happy
even for a moment. His voice, even while he jested, was hollow and
sorrowful. There was a trepidation in his manner, half hope, half fear,
as if he dreaded that some one would presently announce to him a
desperate disaster, or fancied that some sudden piece of good luck
was about to befall him, and he must be all attention lest it pass to
another. Nothing of the anxiety of a guilty man about him,—of one
who hears pursuit in the hum of a cricket or the buzz of a bee; only
the uneasiness of one flying forever from himself, and hoping that
some chance bliss will hold his flight and give him a moment’s
forgetfulness.
We of course accepted the kindly invitation. Civilization was the
novelty to us. Tea with a gentleman and lady was a privilege quite
unheard of. We should both have been ready to devote ourselves to
a woman far less charming than our hostess. But here was a pair—
the beautiful daughter, the father astray—whom we must know more
of. I felt myself taking a very tender interest in their welfare,
revolving plans in my mind to learn their history, and, if it might be
done, to persuade the father out of his delusion.
“Now, gentlemen,” said our friend, playing his part with mild
gracefulness, like an accomplished host; “sit down on the blankets. I
can not give you grand arm-chairs, as I might have done once in Old
England, and hope to do if you ever come to see me at my house in
Deseret. But really we are forgetting something very important. We
have not been formally introduced. Bless me! that will never do.
Allow me gentlemen to present myself, Mr. Hugh Clitheroe, late of
Clitheroe Hall, Clitheroe, Lancashire,—a good old name, you see.
And this is my daughter, Miss Ellen Clitheroe. These gentlemen, my
dear, will take the liberty to present themselves to you.”
“Mr. Richard Wade, late of California; Mr. John Brent, a roving
Yankee. Pray let me aid you Miss Clitheroe.”
Brent took the teakettle from her hand, and filled the teapot. This
little domestic office opened the way to other civil services.
It was like a masquerading scene. My handsome friend and the
elegant young lady bending together over four cracked cups and as
many plates of coarse earthenware, spread upon a shawl, on the dry
grass. The circle of wagons, the groups of Saints about their supper
fires, the cattle and the fort in the distance, made a strangely unreal
background to a woman whose proper place, for open air, was in the
ancient avenue of some ancestral park, or standing on the terrace to
receive groups of brilliant ladies coming up the lawn. But character is
superior to circumstance, and Miss Clitheroe’s self-possession
controlled her scenery. Her place, wherever it was, became her right
place. The prairie, and the wagons, and the rough accessories, gave
force to her refinement.
Mr. Clitheroe regarded the pair with a dreamy pleasure.
 “Quite patriarchal, is it not?” said he to me. “I could fancy myself
Laban, and my daughter Rachel. There is a trace of the Oriental in
her looks. We only need camels, and this would be a scene worthy
of the times of the Eastern patriarchs and the plains of the old Holy
Land. We of the Latter Day Church think much of such associations;
more I suppose than you world’s people.”
And here the old gentleman looked at me uneasily, as if he
dreaded lest I should fling in a word to disturb his illusion, or
perhaps ridicule his faith.
“I have often been reminded here of the landscape of Palestine,”
said I, “and those bare regions of the Orient. Your friends in Utah,
too, refresh the association by their choice of Biblical names.”
“Yes; we love to recall those early days when Jehovah was near
to his people, a chosen people, who suffered for faith’s sake, as we
have done. In fact, our new faith and new revelation are only
revivals and continuations of the old. Our founder and our prophets
give us the doctrines of the earliest Church, with a larger light and a
surer confidence.”
He said this with the manner of one who is repeating for the
thousandth time a lesson, a formula which he must keep constantly
before him, or its effect will be gone. In fact, his resolute assertion
of his creed showed the weak belief. As he paused, he looked at me
again, hoping, as I thought, that I would dispute or differ, and so he
might talk against contradiction, a far less subtle enemy than doubt.
As I did not immediately take up the discussion, he passed lightly,
and with the air of one whose mind does not love to be consecutive,
to another subject.
“Hunters, are you not?” said he, turning to Brent. “I am
astonished that more of you American gentlemen do not profit by
this great buffalo-preserve and deer-park. We send you a good shot
occasionally from England.”
“Yes,” said my friend. “I had a capital shot, and capital fellow too
for comrade, this summer, in the mountains. A countryman of yours,
Sir Biron Biddulph. He was wretchedly out of sorts, poor fellow,
when we started. Fresh air and bold life quite set him up. A month’s
galloping with the buffalo, and a fortnight over the cliffs, after the
big-horn, would ‘put a soul under the ribs of death.’ Biddulph left me
to go home, a new man. I find that he has stayed in Utah, for more
hunting, I suppose.”
Brent was kneeling at Miss Clitheroe’s feet, holding a cup for her
to fill. He turned toward her father as he spoke. At the name of
Biddulph, I saw that her red lips’ promise of possible blushes was no
false one.
“Ah!” thought I; “here, perhaps, is the romance of the Baronet’s
history. No wonder he found England too narrow for him, if this
noble woman would not smile! Perhaps he has stopped in Utah to
renew his suit, or volunteer his services. A strange drama! with new
elements of interest coming in.”
I could not refrain from studying Miss Clitheroe with some
curiosity as I thought thus.
She perceived my inquisitive look. She made some excuse, and
stepped into the wagon.
“Biddulph!” said the father. “Ellen dear, Mr. Brent knows our old
neighbor, Biron Biddulph. O, she has disappeared, ‘on hospitable
thoughts intent.’ I shall be delighted to meet an old friend in
Deseret. We knew him intimately at home in better days,—no! in
those days I blindly deemed better, before I was illumined with the
glories of the new faith, and saw the New Jerusalem with eyes of
hope.”
Miss Clitheroe rejoined us. She had been absent only a moment,
but, as I could see, long enough for tears, and the repression of
tears. I should have pitied her more; but she seemed, in her stout-
hearted womanhood, above pity, asking no more than the sympathy
the brave have always ready for the sorrowful brave.
Evidently to change the subject, she engaged Brent again in his
tea-table offices. I looked at that passionate fellow with some
anxiety. He was putting a large share of earnestness in his manner
of holding cups and distributing hardtack. Why so much fervor and
devotion, my friend? Seems to me I have seen cavaliers before,
aiding beauties with like ardor, on the carpet, in the parlor, over the
Sèvres and the silver. And when I saw it, I thought, “O cavalier! O
beauty! beware, or do not beware, just as you deem best, but know
that there is peril!” For love can improvise out of the steam of a
teapot a romance as big and sudden and irrepressible as the Afreet
that swelled from the casket by the sea-shore in the Arabian story.
We sat down upon the grass for our picnic. I should not invite the
late Mr. Watteau, or even the extant Mr. Diaz, to paint us. The late
Mr. Watteau’s heroes and heroines were silk and satin Arcadians;
they had valets de chambre and filles de chambre, and therefore
could be not fully heroes and heroines, if proverbs be true. The
present Mr. Diaz, too, charming and pretty as he is, has his place
near parterres and terraces, within the reach of rake and broom. Mr.
Horace Vernet is equally inadmissible, since that martial personage
does not comprehend a desert, except with a foreground of blood,
smoke, baggy red pantaloons, and mon General on a white horse
giving the Legion of Honor to mon enfant on his last legs. But I must
wait for some artist with the gayety of Mr. Watteau, the refinement
of Mr. Diaz, and the soldierly force of Mr. Vernet, who can perceive
the poetry of American caravan-life, and can get the heroine of our
picnic at Fort Bridger to give him a sitting. Art is unwise not to
perceive the materials it neglects in such scenes.
Mr. Clitheroe grew more and more genial as we became better
acquainted. He praised the sunshine and the climate. England had
nothing like it, so our host asserted. The atmosphere of England
crushed the body, as its moral atmosphere repressed perfect
freedom of thought and action.
“Yes, gentlemen,” said he, “I have escaped at last into the region
I have longed for. I mean to renew my youth in the Promised Land,
—to have my life over again, with a store of the wisdom of age.”
 Then he talked pleasantly of the incidents of his journey,—an
impressible being, taking easily the color of the moment, like a child.
He liked travel, he said; it was dramatic action and scene-shifting,
without the tragedy or the over-absorbing interest of dramatic plot.
He liked to have facts come to him without being laboriously sought
for, as they do in travel. The eye, without trouble, took in whatever
appeared, and at the end of the day a traveller found himself
expanded and educated without knowing it. There was a fine luxury
in this, for a mature man to learn again, just as a child does, and
find his lessons play. He liked this novel, adventurous life.
“Think of it, sir,” he said, “I have seen real Indians, splendid
fellows, all in their war-paint; just such as I used to read of with
delight in your Mr. Fenimore’s tales. And these prairies too,—I seem
to have visited them already in the works of your charming Mr.
Irving,—a very pleasant author, very pleasant indeed, and quite
reminding me of our best essayists; though he has an American
savor too. Mr. Irving, I think, did not come out so far as this. This
region has never been described by any one with a poetic eye. My
brethren in the Church of the Latter Day have their duties of stern
apostleship; they cannot turn aside to the right hand nor to the left.
But when the Saints are gathered in, they will begin to see the
artistic features of their land. Those Wind River Mountains—fine
name, by the way—that I saw from the South Pass,—they seem to
me quite an ideal Sierra. Their blue edges and gleaming snow-peaks
were great society for us as we came by. We are very fond of
scenery, sir, my daughter and I, and this breadth of effect is very
impressive after England. England, you know, sir, is tame,—a snug
little place, but quite a prison for people of scope. Lancashire, my
old home, is very pretty, but not grand; quite the contrary. I have
grown really quite tired of green grass, and well-kept lawns, and the
shaved, beardless, effeminate look of my native country. This rough
nature is masculine. It reminds me of the youth of the world. I like
to be in the presence of strong forces. I am not afraid of the Orson
feeling. Besides, in Lancashire, particularly, we never see the sun;
we see smoke; we breathe smoke; smoke spoils the fragrance and
darkens the hue of all our life. I hate chimneys, sir; I have seen
great fortunes go up them. I might perhaps tell you something of
my own experience in looking up a certain tall chimney not a
hundred miles from Clitheroe, and seeing ancestral acres fly up it,
and ancestral pictures and a splendid old mansion all going off in
smoke. But you are a stranger, and do not care about hearing my
old gossip. Besides, what is the loss of houses and lands, if one finds
the pearl of great price, and wins the prophet’s crown and the saint’s
throne?”
And here the gray-haired, pale, dreamy old gentleman paused,
and a half-quenched fire glimmered in his eye. His childish, fanatical
ambition stirred him, and he smiled with a look of triumph.
I was silent in speechless pity.
His daughter turned, and smiled with almost tearful tenderness
upon her father.
“I have not heard you so animated for a long time, dear father,”
she said. “Mr. Wade seems quite to inspire you.”
“Yes, my dear, he has been talking on many very interesting
topics.”
I had really done nothing except to bow, and utter those civil
monosyllables which are the “Hear! hear!” of conversation.
If I had been silent, Brent had not. While the garrulous old
gentleman was prattling on at full speed, I had heard all the time my
friend’s low, melodious voice, as he talked to the lady. He was a
trained artist in the fine art of sympathy. His own early sorrows had
made him infinitely tender with all that suffer. To their hearts he
came as one that had a right to enter, as one that knew their
malady, and was commanded to lay a gentle touch of soothing
there. It is a great power to have known the worst and bitterest that
can befall the human life, and yet not be hardened. No sufferer can
resist the fine magnetism of a wise and unintrusive pity. It is as mild
and healing as music by night to fevered sleeplessness.