Letter to Charles G. Wood Theodore A. Penney to Charles G. Wood (below), 28 September 1889, Bingham, Utah. Wood and Penney had been students at the Salt Lake Academy during the previous few years. Penney wrote this description of the Liberal party's election victory to Wood, then a student at Amherst College (Utah State University, Special Collections and University Archives).

"I got back to main st. about midnight. The stump speeches were all over then and the hurrahs was just commencing Main St was crowded and the police were driven into their holes and the devil reigned supreme. The crowd had torches, tin horns, tin cans & Pans, cow bells, sleigh bells, dinner bells, cannon firecrackers, small ditto, rockets, ect., ect. About 1 oclock some one rolled an old Tar barrel out on the Walker corner and set it on fire and kept it burning untill three oclock in the a.m. by putting on carriage steps, signs, old barrels & boxes and any thing that could be got hold of that would burn. I expected to see the whole town burned before they got through. There were seven of those bonfires on M Street at one time. Next morning there was only one carriage step left on Main St. in front of the Walker House and that was bolted down. By 3 a.m. Those who were more quietly inclined had gone to roost and the rest were too drunk and hoarse from yelling to be interesting any longer and I crawled in."

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