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Show Page 254 husband. Come and see, before I cut off my beard; you will perhaps recognize the voice, if not the countenance..." 35 He had not seen his young Juliaet for nearly four years, but Brigham kept him busy anyway. Orson's work was by no means confined to roaming the territory with his Prophet. Too busy and too late to do any farming, he once again tried his hand at running his own school. He was still very enthusiastic about his mathematicaly "discoveries," and proposed through the Deseret News to open a mathematics school: "...first course, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, surveying, and 'Pratt's Cubic and Biquadratic Equations.' Second course, Analytical geometry and trigonometry, quaternions, conic sections, differential and integral calculus, physics...need twenty students,...$5 a month, or $6 in merchandise, produce, or wood." 36 With some two to three hundred elders weekly in theology class of the "School of the Prophets," Orson labored unremunerated at their instruction - besides his general instruction to the Saints nearly every Sabbath. At general conference, Orson was assigned a detailed explication of the doctrine of atonement, possibly to combat the considerable dissident influence of Amasa Lyman, and preached a new emphasis on an old revelation: the 89th Section, better known as the "Word of Wisdom." He himself was an inveterate coffee drinker, his wives sold coffee through their starveling little mercantiles, and considerable tobacco was being imported into Utah Territory. The Twelve themselves only went without it when they were 37 fasting. So Orson picked up on the code of health in the Tabernacle, lecturing the Saints on dietetics, vegetarianism, and the wanton slaughter 38 of animals. He was also moved to dwell on "home manufactures," the 39 bugbear of Salt Lake's merchant class with which he had such close ties. |