Woodruff was as helpless in the political world as a nun. He was a
gentle, earnest old man, patiently ingenuous and simple-minded, with a
faith in the guidance of Heaven that was only greater than my father's
because it was unmixed with any earthly sagacity. He had the mind, and
the appearance, of a country preacher, and even when he was "on the
underground" he used to do his daily "stint" of farm labor, secretly,
either at night or in the very early morning. He was a successful farmer
(born in Connecticut), of a Yankee shrewdness and industry. He
recognized that in order to get a crop of wheat, it was necessary to do
something more than trust in the Lord. But in administering the affairs
of the Church, he seemed to have no such sophistication.

I can see him yet, at the meetings of the Presidency, opening his mild
blue eyes in surprised horror at a report of some new danger threatening
us. "My conscience! My conscience!" he would cry. "Is that so, brother!"
When he was assured that it was so, he would say, resignedly: "The Lord
will look after us!" And then, after a silence, turning to his First
Councillor, he would ask: "What do you think we ought to do, Brother
George Q.?"

The Second Councillor, Joseph F. Smith, sat at these meetings, in a
saturnine reserve and silence, either nursing his concealed thought or
having none. When a decision had been suggested, he was appealed to and
added his assent. It always seemed to me that he was sulkily sleepy; but
this impression may have come from the contrast of the First Councillor's
mental alertness and the bright cheerfulness of the President--who
never, to my knowledge, showed the slightest bitterness against anybody.
President Woodruff believed that all the persecutions of the Mormons
were due to the Devil's envy of the Lord's power as it showed itself in
the establishment of the Mormon Church: and he assumed that the Gentiles