Mormon Endowment Garments.

From an Exchange.

One of the sweetest Mormon women I have known showed me one of the endowment garments one time, carefully explaining, evidently in order to ease her conscience for the act, whish is forbidden, that I had probably seen it on the clothesline. The garment may best be described as a white union suit, and she told me that every man or woman who had ever been through the temple is expected to wear such a one for the rest of his natural life. Even in removing the garment, to put on a fresh one, it may not be entirely removed until it has been replaced by the new, says Marian Ronsail in her third article on "The Tragedy of the Mormon Women" in the September Housekeeper. It is worn day and night, summer and winter. Woven ones, patterned after the same style, may be worn in cold weather. These garments are seldom seen by Gentiles, especially of late, since the Saints have been forbidden to send them to a public laundry. The garment is supposed to be a kind of invulnerable shield, a protection against disease and violent death. It is particularly distinguished by certain markings, which to the Mormon mind have a deep significance, never to be revealed. The markings are incisions of a V-shape, made over the breast, the abdomen, and one knee.

I remember my astonishment at her answer to my question before I had seen the garment, if it is not the ambition of every woman of her faith to be married in the temple; but her merry laugh as she said, "Yes, of all good Mormon women, but I don't think so of a young girl with pretty neck and arms." Finally she explained that the garment reached to the neck and to the elbow.

A small but interesting incident in connection with the endowments is that each woman is given a new name which she is never to tel? to a living soul except her husband. It is by this name that she is supposed to be admitted into the glory of the hereafter. One Mormon woman, however, her mirth getting the better of her secrecy, confided to a Gentile friend of mine, that she and her woman friends who had gone through the ceremony at the same time, had compared notes and found that each had been called Sarah.