e years ago, trudging by my side, valiant to
fight if the Lord but wills it! But have no fear, boy. This time we go
far beyond all that may tempt the spoiler. We go into the desert, where
no humans are but the wretched red Lamanites; no beasts but the wild
ones of four feet to hunger for our flesh; no verdure, no nourishment to
sustain us save the manna from on high,--a region of unknown perils and
unnamed deserts. Truly we make the supreme test. I do not overcolour it.
Prudence, hand me yonder scrap-book, there on the secretary. Here I
shall read you the words of no less a one than Senator Daniel Webster on
the floor of the Senate but a few months agone. He spoke on the proposal
to fix a mail-route from Missouri to the mouth of the Columbia River in
that far-off land. Hear this great man who knows whereof he speaks. He
is very bitter. 'What do we want with this vast, worthless area--this
region of savages and wild beasts, of deserts, of shifting sands and
whirlwinds of dust, of cactus and prairie-dogs? To what use could we
ever hope to put these great deserts or those endless mountain ranges,
impenetrable and covered to their very base with eternal snows? What can
we ever hope to do with that Western coast, a coast of three thousand
miles, rock-bound, cheerless, uninviting, and not a harbour on it. Mr.
President, I will never vote one cent from the public treasury to place
the Pacific Coast one inch nearer to Boston than it now is!'"

The girl had been making little impatient flights about the room, as if
awaiting an opportunity to interrupt the old man's harangue, but even as
she paused to speak, he began again:

"There, laddie, do you hear him?--arid deserts, shifting sand, snow and
ice, wild beasts and wilder men--that is where Israel of the last days
shall be hidden to wait for the second coming of God's Christ. There,
having received our washings and anointings in the temple of God on
earth, we shall wait unmolested, and spread the curtains of Zion in due
circumspection. And what a migration to be recorded in another sacred
history ages hence! Surely the blood of our martyred Prophet hath not
smoked to heaven in vain. Where is there a parallel to this hegira? They
from Egypt went from a heathen land, a land of idolatry, to a fertile
home chosen for them by the Lord. But we go from a fair, smiling land of
plenty and pretended Christianity into the burning desert. They have
driven us to the edge; now they drive us i