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Show Page 114 firmness and ability, soon won the confidence of Orson Pratt, and soon Orson was looking to him as he had to Joseph Smith. Brigham, for his part, regarded Orson a valuable and useful asset. He recommended to the General Conference Orson's "Mormon Almanac" as a practical acquisition, and, in the latter months of 1844, finally introduced him first-hand to the principle of plural marriage. The Bishop sisters, Charlotte and Adelia Ann, were natives of Crown Point, New York, twenty and seventeen years of age respectively - under Brigham's direction, Orson took them by the hand and was sealed "for time and all eternity" to the sisters. Sarah Marinda Pratt, also present at the ceremony, had to give her consent to the marriages, and she did so - reluctantly, as it later proved. Charlotte, the older of the two new wives, abandoned the arrangement within a few months, while "Delia" remained faithful all her life to 28 her shared husband. "Plurality" suddenly became wide-spread in Nauvoo - where the Prophet Joseph had been hesitant, Brigham Young did not fear to tread. He was determined that Joseph Smith's vision of Nauvoo's greatness be carried out. He expanded and systematized priesthood ordinations, provided a missionary training center in the form of a two-story building called the Seventies' Hall, and put great emphasis on the completion of the temple and the cultivation of gardens and brick homes within the city limits. Orson Pratt spoke at the dedication of the Seventies' Hall soon after Christmas 1844. In this address, Orson explained his view of original sin; it was a highly unorthodox view influenced by Joseph Smith's ritual enactment, in the course of the endowment ceremony, of the fall of man. He announced that Adam's "transgression" consisted of a free choice between remaining forever alone in Paradise, or accompanying the fallen Eve in order to |