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Show Page 284 of Joseph Smith's nephew, Orson climbed the hill where the Book of Mormon plates had been unearthed, prayed, and enjoyed a quiet spiritual 32 "blessing" which goes undescribed in his report. The Hudson River railway south from Albany to New York City provided Orson with a final look at the scenes of his youthful wanderings. Still thick with forest, though much more crowded than in the days when Orson hiked them, these green tillages seemed a world away from the valleys of stark stone he had wrestled with for thirty years. In the great city he enjoyed a pleasant hotel attended by stewards and waiters, "all of which 33 amounted to some $40 or $50," another far cry from his first visit to the diseased island of Manhattan to start his apprenticeship five decades before. A visit to the mission headquarters produced a little correspondence, but none so surprising as a letter from Sarah Marinda Pratt - she was thinking of him and wanted him to write to her. Dutifully, but with a lack of warmth from the troubled years of separation , he responded: "As you requested me to write to you, I do so, addressing you, as formerly, under the affectionate title of wife. You once were one with me in the new and everlasting covenant. You once, professedly, believed in the sealing ordinances, according to the revelation on Marriage for eternity. You, at several times, did put the hands of others into my hand, and did give them to me as wives... after several years had elapsed, I proposed to you, to commence living upon principles of greater equality (with them)...this proposition you positively rejected...You, doubtless, looked upon the trial as one too great for you ...and accordingly separated yourself from me, as far as some of the conjugal duties of a wife were concerned...How long I shall live to contribute my mite to you, is unknown to me...." There was never to be reconciliation between the two; even in their age the stain of her suspected infidelity so many years before still rankled, and Sarah's outrage at the plural marriages steeled her against him until the day she died. But the humble and statuesque Marian, along with the others, comforted him: |