spire it--an incident of which a
false account was given before a Senate Committee in Washington
during the Smoot investigation of 1904, accompanied by a denial of
responsibility by Joseph F. Smith, the man whose authority alone
encouraged and accomplished the tragedy--for it was a tragedy, as
dark in its import to the Mormon community as it was terrible in its
immediate consequences to all our family.

By his denial of responsibility and by secret whisper within the Church,
Smith has placed the disgrace of the betrayal upon my father, who
was guiltless of it, and blackened the memory of my dead brother by a
misrepresentation of his motives. I feel that it is incumbent upon me,
therefore, at whatever pain to myself, to relate the whole unhappy truth
of the affair, as much to defend the memory of the dead as to denounce
the betrayal of the living, to expose a public treason against the
community not less than to correct a private wrong done to the good name
of those whom it is my right to defend.

Late in July, 1896, when I was in New York on business for the
Presidency, I received a telegram announcing the death of my brother,
Apostle Abraham H. Cannon. We had been companions all our lives; he had
been the nearest to me of our family, the dearest of my friends but even
in the first shock of my grief I realized that my father would have a
greater stroke of sorrow to bear than I; and in hurrying back to Salt
Lake City I nerved myself with the hope that I might console him.

I found him and Joseph F. Smith in the office of the Presidency,
sitting at their desks. My father turned as I entered, and his face was
unusually pale in spite of its composure; but the moment he recognized
me, his expression changed to a look of pain that alarmed me. He rose
and put his hand on my shoulder with a tenderness that it was his habit
to conceal. "I know how you feel his loss," he said hoarsely, "but when
I think what he would have had to pass through if he had lived I cannot
regret his death."

The almost agonized expression of his face, as much as the terrible
implication of his words, startled me with I cannot say what horrible
fear about my brother. I asked, "Why! Why--what has happened?"

With a sweep of his hand toward Smith at his desk--a gesture and a
look the most unkind I ever saw him use--he answered: "A few weeks ago,
Abraham took a plural wife, Lillian Hamlin. It became known. He would
have had to face a prosecution in Co