The Way it Was - 1878

News brief from the Salt Lake Tribune, July 27, 1878

Both Gentiles and Mormons patronize the evening trains to Lake Point and Black Rock to enjoy the luxury of salt water bathing, but at the last named place dressing rooms are few, and the gentlemen are therefore forced to use one room in common. And that is what troubles the elders, who have a decided aversion to exposing to the gaze of their ungodly companions the shape and style of that much talked of article of apparel known as the Endowment robe. As the Chinaman expresses it, it is "shirtee drawers alle same," and the sly manner in which the elders slip out of that holy robe is truly amusing to the unanointed beholder. The saintesses, however, have not the courage to exhibit that disgraceful undergarment to Gentile-women, for they know how prone a woman's eye is to photograph any article of dress upon the mind, and the sisters therefore cannot be induced to disrobe in the presence of the uninitiated. Such a fact in itself is nothing more or less than a confession on the part of those who wear Endowment robes, that the ceremony by which the rules are put upon them is a humbug and a fraud. Otherwise brethren and sisters, why is it you are ashamed of the wretched looking things?