nd. The teachers' quorum in any neighborhood consists of some
tried elders, usually of considerable ability and experience. With these
are associated numerous young men, many of them returned missionaries.
The fact that they have countless other duties in the Church and many
other and weightier responsibilities, is not permitted to excuse them
from performing strictly this important labor. Perhaps a dozen or twenty
families are assigned to a couple of teachers. They are required to
visit each of these families once every month. And if they discover any
lapse of fidelity, they report at once to the Bishop.

No one who has not seen them on their rounds will believe with what an
air of divinely privileged authority they enter a home and force its
secrets of conscience--with what an imposing and arrogant zeal--with
what a calm assumption of spiritual over-lordship and inquisitorial
right. Some few years ago after my public criticisms of Joseph F. Smith
had been followed by my excommunication, two teachers, on their monthly
rounds, came to my home in the evening and made their way calmly to the
library where I was sitting with some members of my family. I had just
returned from a long absence abroad, and the visit was an untimely
intrusion at its best; but we observed the obligations of hospitality
with what courtesy we could, and merely evaded the familiar questions
which they began to put to us. Finally, the elder of the two teachers,
a man of some local prominence in the Church, undertook to "bear
testimony" to the wickedness of anyone who opposed the divine rule of
Joseph F. Smith; and when I cut him short with a request that he leave
the house, he was as shocked and surprised as if he had been Milton's
Archangel Michael, after "the fall," and I, a defiant Adam, showing him
the door.

In addition to the visitations of the ward teachers, some members of the
Ladies Relief Society call upon every family usually once a month, not
only to gather donations for the poor, but to have a little quiet talk
with the wife and mother of the household. These women of the Relief
Society are genuine "Sisters of Charity." In most cases they have
themselves plenty of household cares, yet they give much of their time
to visiting the sick, supplying the wants of the needy or ministering
to the miseries of the afflicted; and if it were not for them and their
noblework, the Mormon poor would fare ill in these days of Mormon Church
grandeur. O