If You're Willing to Stoop

They walked down South Tabernacle.  In the five days since Brigham Young’s return to his office, the street had been repaired and most of the windows, but the street’s many trees remained blasted and withered stumps, or bare baked earth, and much of the old plascrete still had black scorch marks on it, obscuring the sparkle.

“If only you Americans had put in your Transcontinental Railroad or your telegraph earlier,” Burton commented as they neared the Lion House, “we’d be spared the journey.”

“There won’t be a railroad,” Sam said, “and Young still isn’t convinced about the telegraph.  Young doesn’t really want either of them in the first place, and, at least for a little while, he’ll need to keep outsiders out of the Kingdom, to avoid giving away his bluff.  Besides, don’t you want to get home to your fiancée Isabel?  And to writing your books?”

“I do,” Burton admitted.  He looked slightly embarrassed as he said the words.  “I have in mind a memoir of this journey, though I don’t know whether anyone would believe it.”

“Sell it as fiction,” Sam suggested.  “I think you’ll find you can tell a lot of interesting truth, if you’re willing to stoop to writing novels.”