The Mormon Prophet

The parlour which Joseph Smith had provided for Susannah was large and high. On its Brussels carpet immense vases of flowers and peacock's feathers sprawled; stiff and gaudy fur...

When that day began to wane Susannah was still sitting in the empty curtained room. No plan which offered even a fair hope of escape had occurred to her mind. Although in pictur...

Ohio was being quickly settled. Within a few miles of Kirtland, Cleveland and Paynesville were rising on the lake shore, and to the south there were numerous villages; but the s...

With the jubilant Saints at Quincy the prophet could not remain long. He journeyed up the banks of the Mississippi. Here and there communities of his people welcomed him with to...

On a certain day in the week there befell what the aunt called a "season" of baking. It was the only occasion in the week when Mrs. Croom was sure to stay for some length of tim...

It was long after the day of her departure before Ephraim again set out to find Susannah. An illness to which he was subject first came upon him, and then, when days were past a...

The stranger was of middle age, with hair already gray and face deeply furrowed. In ragged garments, resting his bandaged feet, he sat propped in the sitting-room. The warm air...

All the doings of the infant sect were directed by those utterances of Joseph Smith which he held to be revelations. These were confided sometimes to the elders, sometimes to th...

The May morning was wreathing itself with opening flowers to meet the first hour of sunlight when Susannah was startled by hearing that the prophet inquired for her. There was i...

Susannah found her rooms as she had left them. Emma was not there to bid her good-bye, nor did any messenger wait with the money. She set her parcels ready for the driver to lif...

It was the season of rain and sleet, of rude northerly winds. The roads, across a tract of flat fields and in among the low woods that fringed the rivers, were heavy with mud.

So near came the rumours of war that the Mormons of Haun's Mill entered into a renewed compact of mutual peace with the Gentiles around them. The place was about twenty miles be...

That night Susannah packed her possessions in the smallest possible compass. The money she had lent to Emma would be sufficient for the journey to Carthage, which was the neares...

How much better humanity might have been had we been at the world's making we cannot tell, but as it is, the Creator knows that a woman whose veins are pulsing with youth does n...

After Smith left Kirtland there was a great exodus Missouri-ward of his more devout followers. The army which had gone out from Kirtland in '34 to the rescue of the fugitives fr...

Only the outline of passing events was reported to Susannah in her haven of peace. The elder man took her into his courtly care, and made a point of explaining to her what he th...

Far off on the horizon the cumulous clouds lay with level under-ridges, their upper outlines softly heaped in pearly lights and shades of dun and gray. Beneath them the hilly li...

When Susannah was returning from her parting with Ephraim Croom, she found Joseph Smith was walking slowly upon the road not far from John Biery's hotel. He was holding a small...

In the summer of that same year, while the wheat in the Manchester fields was still green, and the maize had attained but half its growth, while the ox-eyed daisies still stood...

In the next year, 1831, the new church was formally organised, and this was the "revelation" given for her direction by the mouth of Joseph Smith--"And now, behold, I speak unto...

The house in which the Smiths lived was small. Susannah crossed a field-path, led by a light in their window. In the living room a truckle bed had already been made up. By the f...

The Mississippi was filled with large cakes of floating ice. Another company which had gone out from Far West some weeks before was still encamped on the Missouri banks of the r...

Susannah had been greatly weighed down by depression, not fearing ill-luck, but regretting for the first time unfeignedly that she had ever joined herself to the sect in which h...

It was a cold night; the first snow was falling upon the wings of a gale. Susannah was sitting alone quietly working out problems in algebra, in which study Smith had desired th...

In the United States of America there was, in the early decades of this century, a very widely spread excitement of a religious sort. Except in the few long-settled portions of...

Only one unusual incident occurred in Susannah's presently peaceful life. One day in the golden October she set out to walk some distance up the valley of the Chagrin River. The...

Smith was looking over Darling's accounts in the tithing office, giving voluminous and minute directions. The May night had closed in. The men were in a corner of the large shed...

The umbrella was a very heavy one. Susannah certainly could not have held it against the wind. Joseph Smith held the shelter between Susannah and the blast, looking at her occas...

At break of day Halsey was waiting upon the road with a fairly good horse and a comfortable chaise. Susannah never forgot the light that came to his eyes when he saw her approac...

The next day, toward afternoon, Joseph Smith stood by the bedside of Angel Halsey. Susannah, wan and weary with a long night's nursing, was sitting beside the pillow. Smith look...

Susannah left the canal boat at Rochester. She had borrowed as small a sum as might be, and was now penniless, possessing only her travel-worn garments; she had no choice but to...

The return of Smith and his few followers, and the speedy publication of the first edition of the Book of Mormon, stirred anew the flames of religious excitement. All other sect...

They did not send the child to Far West, or even insist on Elvira seeking safety there, because that town also became swiftly involved in the flames of the war which had flashed...

She stood at her windows and looked east and west upon the fair white city, and more immediately upon the broad public square in which well-dressed people and handsome equipages...

The wind that in the hurly-burly out of doors had been a cheerful if boisterous enemy, seemed suddenly transformed into a wailing spirit when Susannah was making her way up the...

All the powers of the young Danite were strung by excitement into the fiercest vitality, and he thought that physical fatigue was the best medicine for Susannah's mind. Why he h...

In the meantime an interval of comparative peace had come to Kirtland. The Gentiles, because they discovered that the town was a good market for the produce of more fields than...

That evening Ephraim Croom stood in his father's sitting-room, near the door of the dark stair that led up to his own rooms. His shoulders were drooping. His face was gray and h...