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Show Page 224 by the hundreds - and the sight swept him away, like Isaiah "enrapt in prophetic vision": "...the poor trust in Zion for a place of deliverance, see them^come from the islands and from the nations afar off! See mighty ships spread forth their sails to the winds of heaven, filled with Zion's children! hear their cheerful songs, as they are swiftly carried up the rolling current of the broad majestic rivers of Zion's land...These are the pastures of the Lord...bespangled with the flowers of Eden!...Here they gradually ascend the great highway of the redeemed, till they gain the mountaintops...the lovely vales of Ephraim...." 34 On this exalted note Orson closed his English mission tracts, whether or not he intended to continue is not clear - the tracts bore successive page numbers, which indicates he had a unified volume of commentary in mind, or perhaps just an open-ended series which could be picked up again in the future. At any rate, the last tract was published near the first of April 1857. At forty-five Orson was well past middle age for men of his time. Hawthorne described him in 1856 as short,dark, and uncouth - he saw himself as "fleshy." And the enormous weight of business, the responsibility for the safe passage of hundreds of emigrants, began to tell on him. He wrote to his wife: "I am in good health, at present, with the exception 35 of being somewhat afflicted with dizziness." His eyes were still bright, his smile still peculiarly child-like, but his increased girth and light-headedness signaled the onset of a slow, malevolent killer - the "sweet sickness," diabetes. His energy would be poured out sluggishly, until at the end weakness and pain would take him down quickly. Then a sad and dark-hued message from Parley in St. Louis brought him even closer to the realization of his own mortality: "You ask me how long I will stay in the States. I answer till spring. I will then go home if God will, if I have to go with a handcart. This country is no place for me, the darkness is so thick I can litterally feel it...Now Dear Br. Orson be of good courage, our pilgrimage will soon be |
