History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

584 POLITICAL, SOCIAL, AND INSTITUTIONAL.
paper. Dancing commenced about four p. m., the president
of the church pronouncing a blessing with up-
lifted hands, and then leading off the first cotillon.
All joined vigorously in the dance, and the prophet,
his apostles, and bishops set the example, the salta-
tions not being in the languid gliding pace then fashionable
in other cities, but elaborately executed steps
requiring severe muscular exercise. At eight came
supper, a substantial repast, with four courses, 31 after
which dancing was resumed, varied at intervals with
song until four or five o'clock in the morning, when
the party broke up, the entertainment closing with
prayer and benediction.
Besides these fashionable gatherings held from time
to time by the elite of Zion, there were ward parties,
elders' cotillon parties, and picnic parties, the last
being sometimes held at the social hall, where rich and
poor assembled, bringing with them their children, and
setting their own tables, or ordering dainties from an
adjoining kitchen provided for that purpose. Here,
also, until 1862, when the first theatre was built, theatrical
entertainments were given in winter, 32 and these
of no mean order, for among the Mormons there was
no lack of amateur talent. 33 Among those who par-
31 Copies of the card of invitation and the m6nu at a ' territorial and civil
ball' lisld at the social hall, Feb. 7, I860, will be found in Burton's City of
the Saints, i:31-2. Among the dishes are bear, beaver-tails, slaw, mountain,
pioneer, and snowballs. What the names all signify I am unable to state.
Otherwise the bill of fare contains a large and choice variety of viands.
32 Cooke's T/ieatr. and Soc. Affairs in Utah, MS., 9. In summer they were
held at the bowery. The S. L. theatre, or as it was usually termed the operahouse,
was dedicated March 6th of this year. Sloan's Utah Gazetteer, 1884, p.
28. A gentleman who visited the city two or three years later states that
its interior resembled the z Dera-house at New York, having seats for 2, uuu and
capacity for 500 more. Externally the building was a plain but not ungraceful
structure of stone, brick, ai-d stucco. Atlantic Monthly, Apr. 1864, p. 490.
33 Among others Burton mentions H. B. Clawson, B. Snow, and W. C. Dunbar.
During his stay the ' Lady oi Lyons ' was performed. City of the Saints,
280. See also Deseret News, March 2, 1864; Busch, Oesch. Horm. , 311-12, 330;
The Mormons at Home, 149-51. Chandless, who visited the social hall one
evening in the winter of 1S55-6, when the third act of Othello and a two-act
drama were performed, mentions that the parts of Othello and Iago were
fairly rendered, but that the other characters were beneath criticism. Desdemona,
he says, ' was a tall, masculine female, with cheeks painted beyond the
possibility of a blush. Even worse was Emilia—an old dowdy, she looked,
who might have been a chambermaid at a third-rate hotel for a quarter of a