the next day beheld both parties on the march for the frontiers of

Utah. The distance to be traversed was not great; but the nature

of the country, and the difficulty of procuring food, extended the

time to nearly three weeks; and my father had thus ample leisure to

know and appreciate the girl whom he had succoured. I will call my

mother Lucy. Her family name I am not at liberty to mention; it is

one you would know well. By what series of undeserved calamities

this innocent flower of maidenhood, lovely, refined by education,

ennobled by the finest taste, was thus cast among the horrors of a

Mormon caravan, I must not stay to tell you. Let it suffice, that

even in these untoward circumstances, she found a heart worthy of

her own. The ardour of attachment which united my father and

mother was perhaps partly due to the strange manner of their

meeting; it knew, at least, no bounds either divine or human; my

father, for her sake, determined to renounce his ambitions and

abjure his faith; and a week had not yet passed upon the march

before he had resigned from his party, accepted the Mormon

doctrine, and received the promise of my mother's hand on the

arrival of the party at Salt Lake.

The marriage took place, and I was its only offspring. My father

prospered exceedingly in his affairs, remained faithful to my

mother; and though you may wonder to hear it, I believe there were

few happier homes in any country than that in which I saw the light

and grew to girlhood. We were, indeed, and in spite of all our

wealth, avoided as heretics and half-believers by the more precise

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