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Show Page 244 of intervening years, eventually became stock evidence in the case against Mormon polygamy. Once more Orson had to make the melancholy choice between his family and his God; he was used to it by now, but that did not in any way solace him: "This was a hard and grievous trial to me: but... I firmly concluded to follow my convictions, though it should be at the 18 sacrifice of life itself." Physically, Orson was gaining ground a little but still pleaded with Brigham Young to be excused from returning to the hard-rock scourge of Dixie...the Prophet demurred. There would be no release from the southern assignment, although Brigham had a temporary reprieve in mind - a mission to eastern Europe, as yet untouched by Mormon preaching. Orson leaped at the chance and was set apart on April 24, 1864. The overland routes cut off by the commerce of war, Orson left on the new stagecoach line that now linked Salt Lake City with San Francisco. Taking passage for the isthmus he once again endured the four-hour ride over a rickety jungle railroad from Panama to the British port of Aspinwall and thence by steamship to Liverpool. Behind him, the moment he had cleared the Jordan River Bridge, Sarah Marinda Pratt lugged into her back lot a huge pile of diaries, notebooks, journals and sermon jottings - thirty years of her husband's accumulated memoirs - and with a Lucifer match and a 19 little kindling made his life's record a musty spring bonfire. His journey of nine thousand miles to preside in Europe left these troubles obscure and distant. Completely rejuvenated by the voyage, his health, by his own account, had never been better: "I feel well in mind, and believe that the Lord is with me to prosper and open the way before me." On a New York stopover, he encountered a Salt Lake merchant, William S. Godbe, who slipped him $200, in the new "greenbacks" which flooded the post- Civil War economy, towards his mission and the support of his families at |