remember the journey that he had made with his widowed mother across the
Mississippi, across Iowa, across the Missouri, and across the unknown
and desert West, in ox teams, half starved, unarmed, persecuted by
civilization and at the mercy of savages; he could remember all the
toils and hardships of pioneer days "in the Valley;" he had seen the
army of '58 arrive to complete, as he believed, the final destruction of
our people; he had suffered from all the proscriptive legislation of
"the raid," been outlawed, been in exile, been in hiding, hunted like a
thief. He had been taught, and he firmly believed, that the Smiths had
been divinely appointed to rule, in the name of God, over all mankind.
He believed that he--ordained a ruler over this world before ever the
world was--had been persecuted by the hate and wickedness of men. He
believed it literally; he preached it literally; he still believes and
still preaches it. I did not then sympathize with this point of view,
any more than I do now; but I did sympathize with him in the hardships
that he had already endured and in the trials that he was still enduring--
in common with the rest of us. The bond of community persecution
intensified my loyalty. I felt for him almost as I felt for my own
father. I went to him with the young man's trust in age made wise by
suffering.

I had been directed to call on him in the President's offices, in Salt
Lake City, where he was concealed, for the moment, under the name of
"Mack"--the name that he used "on the underground"--and I went with my
brother, late at night, to see him there. The President's offices were
at that time in a little one-story plastered house that had been built
by Brigham Young between two of his famous residences, the "Beehive
House" and the "Lion House" (in which some twelve or fourteen of his
wives had lived). The three houses were within the enclosure of a high
cobblestone wall built by Brigham Young; and at night the great gate of