"The news of my arrival was soon known, and before I could get out of the wagon I was met by a number of old traveling companions, all of whom gave me a hearty welcome, and such a shaking of the hands as I never had before or since.

"Through my experience upon that mission, I became better acquainted with the dealings of the Lord with His servants when alone. I know assuredly

473

hat He will hear and answer our prayers at all times, and under all circumstances if we do and ask aright.

"Before I close, let me say to those who have read this reminiscence, never allow your faith to fail you, but trust in the Lord and continue to pray to Him, and He will answer you. If He should not at first, pray again,and again, and exercise faith, and I do know you will be answered and blessed of the Lord."

Ere the heart hath learned to tremble

For the morrow,

And the eye to well dissemble

Pain and sorrow:

While the rosy morn is bright,
Stars begem each dewy night,
Sunny banks are strewn with flow'rs,
Rich with gifts the joyous hours-
In the happy spring of youth
Life is full of joy and truth,
Bud and promise, bird and rose,
Life and love and blest repose,

And the world were not so bad
Were it not so fleeting.

Ere the birds have ceased to twitter
Beneath the eaves

And their merry wings to glitter

Among the leaves,

Wand'ring by a rolling stream,
Who will wonder if we dream
Of the fields beyond the hill
Where the river, broad and still,
Takes the sunlight on its breast,
Gently rocking it to rest,
With its gleaming wealth of pearls
Nestling 'mong the amber curls;
And the waves are never sad,
Ne'er a shadow greeting.

All around the vintage reddens
Bright and golden,

Birds and flow'rs and joy that deadens
Sorrows olden-

Tranquil, happy there we lie
'Neath kind heaven's cloudless sky,
Sleeping soft by nature's throne,
Care and grief and gloom unknown—
We shall waken in her arms,
Sipping still her honeyed charms,
Nor the pure light of her eye
E'er forsake us till we die-

Shall we ever be less glad?
Mother, watch thou o'er us!

Hush the happy fields are fading
With their meadows;

Clouds the waters bright are shading,

And their shadows

Bring a turmoil o'er the waves:
So, the flow'rs but grow on graves!
That alluring, loving sky

Looked alone on things that die-
Softly tread! the traitor shore
Breaks beneath thee evermore,
For the stream that snatched thy lov'd,
Soon to bear thee, too, is mov'd!
Shall our fearful souls grow mad
'Mid the gloom before us?

Ne'er the sunlight glows and gladdens
To our seeming,

In our hearts a wound now saddens
All our dreaming-

Could our tear-dimmed, yearning eyes
But trans-pierce the gloomy skies,
Jacob's ladder we would seek,
To behold once, calm and meek,
That dear angel, whom we know
Heaven's beauties gladden so-
Once to touch that hand again,
Vanished e'er from haunts of men!
Ah, this world were sad indeed,
Were it not so fleeting!

See another ray is streaming

In the west,

What a wondrous light is gleaming
On its breast!

Clouds are o'er us, but their lies
In their midst a Paradise-
Once again the glowing stream
In its gurgling bids us dream

Of the fields, so bright and still,

In the sunlight, o'er the hill,

Of a fairer, brighter land

Where there dwells no broken band

Aye, the setting sun doth lead

To an endless meeting!

Ruby Lamont.

THE MISSIONARIES. THE matter of great importance occupying the attention of the General Superintendency of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations has been the appointment and assignment of a number of bright young men to labor for several months in the interest of the associations. Many of them have already begun their labors and good work has been done. It is hoped that these young men, who have left their homes and occupations at considerable sacrifice, will be properly received by the Saints everywhere, and especially by the officers and members of the Mutual Improvement Associations. Their purpose is to place the associations upon a proper foundation in accordance with the Manual issued by the General Superintendency. Aside from this they go to arouse enthusiasm for the winter's work, labor with the doubtful, and generally to do all the good they can among the young men of Zion. Traveling without purse or scrip, they are to a great extent, dependent upon the brethren for shelter and accommodations, and their appointment by the highest authority, should insure them these. The Stakes have been combined into districts, and two or more missionaries appointed to each, as follows:

District No. 1.—Salt Lake and Tooele, C. C. Richards and George D. Snell. District No. 2.-Utah, Sanpete and Sevier, (not filled.)

District No. 3.—Juab, Millard, Beaver and Parowan, George A. Smith and W. B. Dougall, Jr.

District No. 4 -St. George, Kanab and Panguitch, James E. Ballantyne and George W. Thatcher, Jr.

District No. 5.-Emery, Uintah and Wasatch, Haskel Shurtliff and George H. Wallace.

District No. 6.—Morgan and Summit, J. H. Moyle and D. L. Murdock.

District No. 7.-Bear Lake, Bannock and Cassia, Josiah Cluff and A. S. Geddes.

District No. 8.-Davis, Weber and Box Elder, Willard Young and Thomas Hull. District No. 9.-Cache, Oneida and Malad, C. S. Burton, Thomas W. Sloan and Nephi Morris.

District No. 10.-San Luis and San Juan, Thomas Y. Stanford and George F. Felt.

District No. 11.-St. John, St. Joseph, Maricopa and Snowflake, H. C. Iverson and Frank Cutler.

THE CONTRIBUTOR.

AT the close of the twelfth volume of

the CONTRIBUTOR, its publishers extend thanks to the people for their extensive patronage and hearty support. In glancing back at the contributions received, there is no hesitation in saying that the volume when bound will equal in interest and value any preceding volume of the magazine. Great pleasure is taken in announcing some of the new features to be introduced which will not only maintain for the magazine its enviable reputation as the leading magazine of home literature, but secure for it a prominent place among the enterprising firstclass literary magazines of the country. The following subjects will receive attention during the early numbers, to be followed by others of great interest.

Columbus and the Discovery and Peopling of America—an illustrated series of historical studies to prepare readers for an appreciation of the four hundredth anniversary and the great World's Fair at Chicago.

The Birthplaces of the Prophets — a series of descriptive sketches made by Junius F. Wells. During the present summer the author has visited Sharon, Windsor County, Vermont; Whitingham, Vermont; Farmington, Connecticut; Potsdam and Trenton, New York, etc., and will describe the scenes surrounding the birthplaces of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, George A. Smith, Daniel H. Wells and others of the prominent leaders of the Church. These papers will be handsomely illustrated.

renown.

NO MORE important convention was ever held in the West than that which met at the Exposition Building, Salt Lake City, September 15th, 16th and 17th, 1891. It was made up of representatives from all the Western States and Territories, and its personnel included men of national It was most appropriate that this Congress should meet in Utah, as the artificial irrigation of farms has been the prevailing system here since the pioneers first entered the valley. That the men who have grown up with the system, were ignored in the formation of our local delegation, is blamable to a smallsouled and prejudiced executive, and this neglect was recognized by the members of the Congress, in their invitation to Presidents Woodruff and Cannon to address the Convention. Upon being introduced by the chairman, President Woodruff said:

"Gentlemen of the Congress:

"I feel myself very thankful that I have lived in the flesh long enough in this Territory to behold the faces of such a congregation of gentlemen as I see here to day. It is not my purpose to occupy your time or attention in arguing or talking or conversing particularly upon the subjects or at least those principles for which you have gathered together; but what I will say will be a few words concerning our arrival here, and upon the principal of irrigation. Fifty-one years ago the twentyfourth of last July, I entered this valley with one hundred and forty-three immigrants, or in other words pioneers. We were led by President Young. This country that we arrived upon was called the Great American Desert, and certainly as far as we could see it did not deviate from that in the least. We found a barren desert here. There was no mark of the Anglo-Saxon race, no mark of the whiteman; everything was barren, dry and desert.

"We pitched our camp a little distance to the southeast from here about eleven o'clock in the day. We had a desire to try the soil to know what it could produce. Of course all this company-nearly the

whole of us were born and raised in the New England states, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, Connecticut-had no experience in irrigation. We pitched our camp, put some teams onto our plows (we brought our plows with us) and undertook to plough the earth, but we found neither wood nor iron were strong enough to make furrows here in this hard soil. It was like adamant. Of course we had to turn water on it. We would have done anything. We went and turned out City creek. We turned over our ground. When we came to put our teams upon it, of course they sunk down to their bellies in mud. We had to wait until this land dried enough to hold our teams up. We put in our crops and we stayed here one month. During that time President Young laid out this city as you see it today in the midst of sage-brush with not a house within hundreds of miles of us. We built a fort around ten acres, three sides of adobe walls eighteen feet high, and one side with logs out of the canyon. We then returned home and some two thousand men followed us. President Cannon here was one of the company that came in after we did.

"Now what I wish to say is this: You gentlemen come here today; you see the city, you go through the country. Here are a thousand miles, I might say, through these mountains filled with cities, towns, villages, gardens and orchards, and the products of the earth that sustain the people. Without this water, this irrigation for which you have met here to-day, this country would be as barren as it was in 1847 as we found it. This irrigation is what you have met to engage in and give your views upon. How I am satisfied it matters not. Whatever you decide upon in this matter and unite upon, I am satisfied it will prove a great blessing; not only to Utah but to every state and territory where these arid lands are, and whoever occupies these lands of course has got to have the water to perform the work, We have had to do the same. We have had to learn by experience and

all that we have obtained in these mountains has been by irrigation. There are portions yet which have not been irrigated, and as one gentleman said here, if you can make two drops of water where there was one, or two spears of grass where there was one you are benefactors to mankind. I say God bless you in your efforts.

President Geo. Q. Cannon was presented by the chairman and said that he was pleased to be called upon to address so large a meeting assembled for the purpose that this one had met to carry out, and he felt confident that nothing but good could come from the deliberations of a body of such intelligent men as the congress was composed of. The question of irrigation was a very important one, and one that has interested him greatly. He took his first lesson in irrigation in Utah in 1848, and while he had not had a practical experience in such matters from that time as had others, he had witnessed the efforts with good satisfaction.

The speaker said it was a notable fact that rainfall seemed to follow in the pathway of civilization. Some rationalists might attribute this to natural causes but for his part he thought that a beneficent Providence ever mindful of the care of His children was the prime factor. Within the past few years there had been an increase in the water supply in City Creek in this city. While he was not exactly in a position to explain this he had noticed it with a great deal of satisfaction.

The speaker favored an allotment of lands in small portions. When Salt Lake was laid out it was with the intention of making it a villa town. The lots were an acre and one-fourth each. Then just outside the city there were five-acre plats, and beyond that ten. Still further they were twenty. He noted with a great deal of satisfaction the fact that a man could live comfortably on one of these twenty-acre plots, and asserted that President Woodruff, who is a splendid farmer, had maintained a family on one of these tracts. And that reminded him of a story. President Woodruff remarked that he believed that he was getting old and that when asked the reason said that

477

his grandson, sixteen years of age, had kept up with him hoeing potatoes.

The plan pursued by the pioneers here had been to avoid all corporation control of water. Water had always been controlled by associations of men who paid for their supply in labor in keeping up old and building new ditches. This had been a very satisfactory method and by it was obtained for what it cost. In conclusion he said he believed there were more people in Utah who owned their own homes than in any other state in the Union.

WRONG SIDE OUT.

QUITE certain it was that, in some way, Jack had gotten out of the wrong side of the bed that morning. He fretted because he had to put on his old shoes; he whined over his saucer of oatmeal. Now his old shoes were easier than his new ones, though less shiny, and, though he liked cream better, he relished milk, and as to the oatmeal, he was fond of that, too, only it was not smoking hot. His sister waited for him to finish his troublesome breakfast, and then she said: "Please, Jack, will you carry this to the post-office for me?"

It was pleasant to walk to the office. Jack generally enjoyed meeting the other boys as he went; besides, he was interested to see whether the stores had filled up their windows with firecrackers and torpedoes and balloons and skyrockets for the coming Independence Day. But for all that, his sister felt quite melancholy to see what an afflicted-looking boy Jack was as he took the letter and marched off dragging his unwilling feet as though they weighed pounds. "I'm always being sent with her letters," mourned the oppressed boy.

It was just so when, later, his mother sent him on an errand for her. At that very house they always smiled on him and gave him seed cakes, but Jack grumbled, "It's too cold to be doing errands, and I shall be late to dinner, I know I shall."

So he was, but the best morsels had been saved for him, and when he fretted because his pudding was burned a trifle