devote
their time to their special work of preaching the gospel.

Topics.--1. Lorenzo Snow as President. 2. Election of B.H. Roberts to
Congress. 3. The Mission to Japan.

Questions and Review.--1. Who constituted the fifth Presidency of the
Church? 2. Tell what you can about Lorenzo Snow. 3. What is the law of
tithing? 4. What message did President Snow deliver regarding the law of
tithing? 5. Why was the Church in debt? 6. Who opened the Japanese mission?

CHAPTER XXXIX.

PRESIDENCY OF JOSEPH F. SMITH.

The First Presidency of the Church was reorganized for the sixth time
October 17, 1901. Joseph F. Smith was chosen president, and he selected for
his counselors, John R. Winder and Anthon H. Lund. At a special conference
held in Salt Lake City November 10, 1901, this presidency was sustained by
the vote of the Church.

From his boyhood President Smith has been an active, earnest member of the
Church over which he now presides. His father was Hyrum Smith the
Patriarch, brother to the Prophet Joseph. You will remember how these two
brothers were so closely together in the beginning of the Church, and how
they were both killed in Carthage jail.

Joseph was thus left fatherless when he was a boy six years old. As a boy
he had not the privilege of going every day to school or of playing
peacefully in the door-yard of his home. Mobs drove them out of Missouri,
and then out of Nauvoo. They had little peace. Two years after his father
had been killed, Joseph's mother, with her family, had to leave her home,
along with the Saints, and undertake the long westward journey. Although
Joseph was only eight years old at the time, he successfully drove a team
of oxen for three hundred miles over the rolling prairies of Iowa. This was
not an easy task for the boy, for the road was often steep or muddy, and
many older drivers had breakdowns on the way.

In chapter 27 of this history you are told of the Saints stopping for a
time at Winter Quarters, getting ready to move westward. Joseph and his
mother were with them. Most of his time was spent in herding his mother's
cattle. And he was a good herdboy, too. He saw to it that none of them was
lost. There were Indians in that country then, and often they would steal
cattle and horses. One day Joseph had a narrow escape. It happened this
way:

Joseph and another boy had driven their cattle to the herd-grounds, and
they were having a good time on their horses which they rod