natives--starving, a ragged wanderer--and by simple force of
personality he had made himself a power among them; so that in later
years Napella, the famous native leader, journeyed to Utah to consult
with him upon the affairs of that distressed state, and Queen
Liluokalani, deposed and in exile, appealed to him for advice. He had
edited and published a Mormon newspaper in San Francisco; and he had
long successfully directed the affairs of the publishing house in Salt
Lake City which he owned. He was a railroad builder, a banker, a
developer of mines, a financier of a score of interests. He combined the
activities of a statesman, a missionary, and a man of business, and
seemed equally successful in all.

But none of these things--nor all of them--contained the total of the
man himself. He was greater than his work. He achieved by the force of a
personality that was more impressive than its achievements. If he had
been royalty, he could not have been surrounded with a greater deference
than he commanded among our people. A feeling of responsibility for
those dependent on him, such as a king might feel, added to a sense of
divine guidance that gave him the dignity of inspiration, had made him
majestical in his simple presence; and even among those who laughed at
divine inspiration and scorned Mormonism as the *Uitlander scorned the
faith of the Boer, his sagacity and his diplomacy and his power to read
and handle men made him as fearfully admired as any Oom Paul in the
Transvaal.

When I entered the low-ceilinged, lamplit room in which he sat, he rose
to meet me, and all rose with him, like a court. He embraced me without
effusion, looking at me silently with his wise blue eyes that always
seemed to read in my face--and to check up in his valuation of me--
whatever I had become in my absence from his regard.