Mr. Street's contract was a vast work, every way one
looked at it; and yet to comprehend what the vague words "eight hundred
miles of rugged mountains and dismal deserts" mean, one must go over the
ground in person--pen and ink descriptions cannot convey the dreary
reality to the reader. And after all, Mr. S.'s mightiest difficulty
turned out to be one which he had never taken into the account at all.
Unto Mormons he had sub-let the hardest and heaviest half of his great
undertaking, and all of a sudden they concluded that they were going to
make little or nothing, and so they tranquilly threw their poles
overboard in mountain or desert, just as it happened when they took the
notion, and drove home and went about their customary business! They
were under written contract to Mr. Street, but they did not care anything
for that. They said they would "admire" to see a "Gentile" force a
Mormon to fulfil a losing contract in Utah! And they made themselves
very merry over the matter. Street said--for it was he that told us
these things:
"I was in dismay. I was under heavy bonds to complete my contract in a
given time, and this disaster looked very much like ruin.
Pages:
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48