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Show Page 201 This was apparently his first contact with Parley in several years - the latter had been en route from South America when Orson had last visited Salt Lake - and Parley quite clearly felt neglected: "Read your letter...with great joy. I will be compelled to pardon your former neglect for so many years, although it was strange indeed, and appears to me unnatural and unkind in a brother. As I could never obtain a line from you, or even an acknowledgement of the Receipt of any of my letters, I had ceased to correspond with you...How great then was my joy on the Receipt of your kind letter not only containing renewal of your brotherly recognition and friendship, but also the good news of the genealogy of our Fathers...." It appears that Parley had little to add to Orson's genealogy, but took the opportunity to bargain a little on sympathy for some financial help: "I am weary all the day long and cannot find time to rest...I have never been able to possess in these valleys, sufficient of cows to do us much service...I have thought sometimes that while my brother had abundant oppertunity to purchase young Stock and have them driven here and was verry careful to pay a tenth of them for Tithing, if he should happen to remember a brother who has toiled till nearly worn out, and lend him half a dozen cows it would not be a miss and could probably be paid in two or three years. But, however, I presume that Brother has enough to do to attend to his own necessities." 29 Orson's herd was surely not opulent, but there is no reason to doubt that he responded positively. Curiously, something had polarized the two brothers, for, although they were deferential enough to each other, something must have rankled in Orson - perhaps the incident in Nauvoo temple, when Parley accused Sarah Pratt of slander. Apparently, Orson had, negligently or perhaps wilfully, failed to answer a number of letters from Parley. On Parley's side, he may have harbored some resentment against Sarah, for he believed she had turned his Mary Ann against him. Whatever the reason, the two brothers were maintaining a strange coolness. In August 1853, Parley wrote again, explaining in a wounded voice that he had appropriated some of the land allotted to Orson, on the instructions |