ghtfully: "What influence could you, a Republican,
have with him? It's true that your youth may make an appeal--and the
fact that you're pleading for your relatives, while not yourself a
polygamist. But he would immediately ask us to abandon plural marriage,
and that is established by a revelation from God which we cannot
disregard. Even if the Prophet directed us, as a revelation from God, to
abandon polygamy, still the nation would have further cause for quarrel
because of the Church's temporal rule. No. I can make no promise. I can
authorize no pledge. It must be for the Prophet of God to say what is
the will of the Lord. You must see President Woodruff, and after he has
asked for the will of the Lord I shall be content with his instruction."

Now, I do not wish to say--though I did then believe it--that the First
Councillor of the Mormon Church was prepared to have the doctrine of
plural marriage abandoned in order to have the people saved. It is
impossible to predicate the thoughts of a man so diplomatic, so astute,
and at the same time so deeply religious and so credulous of all the
miracles of faith. He did believe in Divine guidance. He was sincere
in his submission to the "revelations" of the Prophet. But, in the
complexity of the mind of man, even such a faith may be complicated with
the strategies of foresight, and the priest who bows devoutly to the
oracle may yet, even unconsciously, direct the oracle to the utterance
of his desire. And if my father was--as I suspected--considering a
recession from plural marriage, he had as justification the basic
"revelation," given through "Joseph the Prophet," commanding that the
people should hold themselves in subjection to the government under
which they lived, "until He shall come Whose right it is to rule."

We talked till midnight, in the quiet glow of the farmer's lamp-light,
discussing possibilities, considering policies, weighing men; and then
we parted--he to betake himself to whatever secure place of hiding
he had found, and I to return to Ogden where I was then editing a
newspaper. I was only twenty-nine years old, and the responsibility
of the undertaking that had been entrusted to me weighed on my mind. I
waited for a summons to confer with President Woodruff, but none came.
Instead, my brother brought me word from the President that I must be
"guided by the spirit of the Lord;" and, finally, my father sent me
orders to consult the Second Councillor, Josep