Page:History of Utah.djvu/124



72 THE STORY OF MORMONISM.

and of that fresh, fair- innocence which sits only on a youthful face beaming with high enthusiasm. But it was more than a boy's soul that was seen through those eyes of deep and solemn earnestness; it was more than a boy's strength of endurance that was in- dicated by the broad chest and comely, compact limbs; and more than a boy's intelligence and powers of reasoning that the massive brow betokened.

Hyrum took the stranger to the house, and they passed the night in discourse, sleeping little. The convert's name was Parley P. Pratt. He was a na- tive of Burlington, New York, and born April 12, 1807. His father was a farmer of limited means and education, and though not a member of any religious society, had a respect for all. The boy had a passion for books; the bible especially he read over and over again with deep interest and enthusiasm. He early manifested strong religious feeling; mind and soul seemed all on fire as he read of the patriarchs and kings of the old testament, and of Christ and his apostles of the new. In winter at school, and in summer at work, his life passed until he was sixteen, when he went west with his father William, some two hundred miles on foot, to Oswego, two miles from which town they bargained for a thickly wooded tract of seventy acres, at four dollars an acre, paying some seventy dollars in cash. After a summer's work for wages back near the old home, and a winter's work clearing the forest farm, the place was lost through failure to meet the remaining payments. Another attempt to make a forest home, this time in Ohio, thirty miles west of Cleveland, was more suc- cessful; and after much toil and many hardships, he found himself, in 1827, comfortably established there, with Thankful Halsey as his wife.

Meanwhile relio^ion ran riot throuixh his brain. His mmd, however, was of a reasoning, logical caste. "Why this difference," he argued, "between the an- cient and modern Christians, their doctrines and their