lly amount to much, I mean in the eyes of
the world. Farmers seem to be in a different class from merchants, for
example, or from bankers or other more genteel workers."

"Listen to me, Dorian Trent." Uncle Zed laid down his book as if he had
a serious task before him. "Let me tell you something. If you haven't
done so before, begin now and thank the Lord that you began life on this
globe of ours as a farmer's child and boy. Whatever you do or become in
the future, you have made a good beginning. You have already laid away
in the way of concepts, we may say, a generous store of nature's riches,
for you have been in close touch with the earth, and the life which
teems in soil and air and the waters. Pity the man whose childish eyes
looked out on nothing but paved streets and brick walls or whose young
ears heard nothing but the harsh rumble of the city, for his early
conceptions from which to interpret his later life is artificial and
therefore largely untrue."

Uncle Zed smiled up into the boy's face as if to ask, Do you get that?
Dorian would have to have time to assimilate the idea; meanwhile, he had
another question:

"Uncle Zed, why are there classes among members of our Church?"

"Classes? What do you mean?"

"Well, the rich do not associate with the poor nor the learned with
the unlearned. I know, of course, that this is the general rule in the
world, but I think it should be different in the Church."

"Yes; it ought to be and is different. There are no classes such as you
have in mind in the Church, even though a few unthinking members seem to
imply it by their actions; but there is no real class distinction in the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, only such that are based on
the doing of the right and the wrong. Character alone is the standard of
classification."

"Yes, I see that that should be true."

"It is true. Let me illustrate: The presiding authority in the Church
is not handed down from father to son, thus fostering an aristocratic
tendency; also this authority is so wide-spread that anything like a
"ruling family" would be impossible. In a town where I once lived, the
owner of the bank and the town blacksmith were called on missions. They
both were assigned to the same field, and the blacksmith was appointed
to preside over the banker. The banker submitted willingly to be
directed in his missionary labors by one who, judged by worldly
standards, was far beneath him in the social sca