1860-06-05-New York Herald-Have We The Mormon Chief Among Us

Personal Intelligence

Have We The Mormon Chief Among Us

New York Herald, 5 June 1860, p. 10

Brigham Young, the Mormon Prophet, or, to use his own words, the "President of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints," and the husband of many wives, has been sojourning in Philadelphia for nearly two weeks. He is accompanied by Dr. Bernheizel and other Mormon dignities of the church. His object in visiting this Gentile section of the country is to superintend the preparation of an extensive paper mill for transportation to Salt Lake. Brigham has endeavored to remain inorg, and in order to do so he kept away from the Philadelphia hotels and lodged with a gentleman professing the Mormon faith, but he was recognized by a Gentile who probably knew the Mormon Chief.

Brigham is a light haired, thick set, medium sized, rather round shouldered, shrewd looking man of nearly three score years, and of cheerful and commanding appearance. His prophetic face is ornamented luxuriously with sandy brown whiskers and mustache. Brigham is a live speaker. Under his oratory saints or sinners seldom slide off into mystic dreamland. Generally when he sits in meeting, and sometimes when he is preaching, he wears a hat or handkerchief on his head. As he rises in the stand a manifest interest is excited, which becomes contagious, and rapidly pervaces the whole assembly; while coughs, ahems, and various shufflings are outward and vulgar and visible signs of awakened attention and preparation to hear something. His manner is calm, deliberate, self satisfied and confident, with very little gesticulation, except when fired up with his subject. His voice is far from unpleasant, not very powerful, but still well capable of filling the tabernacle, and is slightly tinged with that hard, inflexible quality common to uncultivated voices, which have been strained by much loud speaking to large assemblies. His utterance is short and sharp, as though, just at the instant of their leaving the door of his lips, he suddenly communicated to his words an extra degree of impulse. This peculiarity, in passages of more than ordinary energy, contributes to imparting his speech a piercing, cutting, thrilling effect. His influence over his hearers is extraordinary. Perhaps, in power to attract and rivet the attention of his audience, he is not excelled by any living orator. This may be partly owing to his peculiar position. Certain it is that the magic of his voice sways a Salt Lake congregation as no other voice can. It is remarkable the dogged patience with which a Mormon audience will sit under the oftimes dry, wordy, threadbear, worn out, long-winded harangues of the small-fry elders, in the hope of at last hearing a spirit stirring word from Brigham.