UTAH: A Dream of Fair Women

In a dream the Angel Moroni appeared to young Joseph Smith and told him where to find the gold plates on which was written, in cryptic characters, the Book of Mormon. The boy went and found the plates, and translated them. Thus, in the year 1830, in Fayette, N.Y., he founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, long hated and reviled by Gentiles because it hallowed the custom of taking several wives. . . .

On a street corner in Salt Lake City, police picked up 37-year-old Mark Larmon Stewart, a post-office employe, as he stood earnestly expounding his faith to pretty Evelyn Christensen.

Father of two children, and expecting another, Postman Stewart told police that the Lord had appeared to him in a dream, commanded him to restore the practice of polygamy which the Mormon Elders abandoned in 1890. Postman Stewart had written to Miss Christensen and to three other Salt Lake City girls, asking them to help him “fulfill a command from the Lord and take on another wife.” Miss Christensen had turned her letter over to the police, agreed to act as a decoy.

How had he chosen the girls? Postman Stewart said he had seen their pictures in a newspaper. Why had he not written to older women? He said the Lord had told him to take women under 40, and that he “might as well pick out the good-looking ones.”

Prophet Smith was murdered by a mob in Carthage, Ill. in 1844. Prophet Stewart was placed in a psychiatric ward for observation.