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Show - 5- Benjamin Perkins With his stern education received in the dark bowels of the earth and education without letters wi t hQut books, without any reading and wr:lting are the fine advantages which school is supposed to give, he met the perplexing situation and made of it a greater success than · many a man who came with his schoolastic degrees of learning. Coming from the coal mine with acalloused hands, with muscles hardned with lon~ years of toil, and betng innured to long hours and poor fare, he was ready to gain an honest living . He made bricks, he quarried stone, herded sheep, dug wells and trenches and foundations excavations . After winning his hundred dollars of gold there in Echo Canyon, by putting over the new and strange business of help1n6 make 3 railroad in the canyons of the rocky mountains, he helped to build the _ Cedar City tabernacle. He also helped to prepare the stone for the Saint George Temple the Manti and the Salt Lake Temple . How should he be a farmer, he whose education had been limited 'to the underground dark tunnels of Wales? Yet he farmed with sturdy resolution, persistence, hope, effort, he learned by trying experiences and be~c ame a good farmer. · He sang, he danced, he loved music, Above all he loved good cheer, and with his invinible l eapons of smiles and jokes, "And the merry heart which doeth good like am medectne,u he won his way over tremendous obstacles . Turning to his notes again: I was called to go and work on the Manti temple, and I remained there ror three months with three days off for Christmas. 1rhen I reached home I found a letter waiting me from Wales. It was from my Fatherin- lw , stating th~t he and his family had about decided to come to Utah. But he took sick and he had to postpone the trip for some . time. We sent a pass to Mary Ann•s younger sister Sarah so that she could come out, but she ·;rou.nljn tt come gJ.thout her parents·. The doctor told Hr . Williams that if he remained in t),rales he would live but a short time, and thought the trip to ~merica ould eith~r ki11 or cure, so he decided to take the chance, and in 1879 he came out~ A year later I voulinteered to go uith a company to Bluff, and I persuaded ~arah to go along and drive a team for me. It took a great deal of persuasion because she had never had a pair of l nes in her hands before,. This sta~e of the story is of vital interest to the big branch of his posterity, arriving at this stage of the game from -rrrales unable to sp ak English, and not yet a member of the church, that there was a wholesome element of destiny prompting him to persuade her to go on this trip of unusual difficulty and hardship, is the firm belief of a fine multitude of people who are indebted to this little angle of human events for their parentage i.nto this world. Sarah Williams was to go along and help ~are for her sister children, but is hardly thinkable th~t her sister's husband _did not even then cherish in his heart a dream of thA future in hich Sarah would b~ to him more than a sister-in-law. How could it be brought about? 8he had not yet accepted the Gospel, and she could be nothing to him but by the power of the · priesthood, and accord; ng to defil"'.i te and strict la-vvs of truth, -·;i thout kno·vledge to read or write the most unan.swerabl testimony he col.itl bear to hear would be his life of devotion to the principles he had accepted as of enough importance to justify a long pilgrimage and hardships unknown to his native land. How yell he succeeded in reallzing those hopes 2 and how unimpeachable his means and his purpose, remain to be s€en as we follo him through the long years to his unsullied finish of a strenuous life. |
