ouncillor's, with the Quorum of the Twelve
Apostles, the Presidents of Seventies, and the presiding Bishopric,
composed of three members. These quorums aggregate twenty-five men; and
to their number may be added the Chief Patriarch of the Church, making a
body of twenty-six general authorities--the Hierarchy. It was from these
latter men, polygamists and (I feared) parochial in their ignorance of
the nation and their trust in the protection of their followers--it was
from them (and the other practicers of polygamy) that any opposition
would come to the acceptance and publication of the manifesto.

They met--something less than a score of them, with two or three of
their most trusted advisers--in one of the general offices of the
Presidency, sitting in leather chairs along its walls, with a sort of
central skylight illuminating subduedly the anxiety of their silent
faces. President Woodruff and his two Councillor's entered to them;
and this insignificant-looking apartment--of such tremendous community
significance, because of the memories of its past--seemed to take on the
gravity of another momentous crisis in the destiny of its people. The
portraits in oils of the dead presidents, martyrs, and prophets of
the Church, looked down on us from the facade of a little gallery, and
caught my eyes almost hypnotically with the imperturbability of their
gaze. No word from them! In the midst of the broken utterance of
emotion--when the tears were wet on faces to whose manliness tears
were the very sweat of martyrdom--I saw those immovable countenances as
placid as the features of the dead.

President Woodruff stood under them, so old and other-worldly, that he
seemed already of their circle rather than ours; and he spoke in a
voice of feeling for us, but with a simple and courageous finality that
sounded the very note of fate. He had called the brethren together (he
said) to submit a decision to their consideration, and he desired from
them an expression of their willingness to accept and abide by it. He
knew what a trial it would be to the "whole household of Israel." "We
have sought," he said, "to live our religion--to harm no one--to perform
our mission in this world for the salvation of the living and the dead.
We have obeyed the principle of celestial marriage because it came to us
from God. We have suffered under the rage of the wicked; we were driven
from our homes into the desert; our prophets have been slain, our holy
o