| OCR Text |
Show 14 performances, demonstrating to the reader that, to her at least, there was as much character in the man as there was charisma. We cannot recommend too highly Ellis's youthful account of the events of the next two years. They are as complex as is the mind of a young woman in love. Merely reading about it can take us, through her skill in narration, back to our own youth. Her father came north from his home in Sanpete County to conduct some business and dry some fruit. His daughter, never having been separated from him for so long, delighted in her chance to visit with him. During this period, Ellis became aware that her education was deficient. Pleasant Grove had no school and her impoverished father could not pay a winter's tuition in the city, so she was somewhat at loose ends. She was therefore eager to accept every invitation to spend a few weeks in the city with the families of friends. On one such visit with the D. H. Wells family, she received her "endowments." This occasion, she declared, "caused me to think more deeply than I had ever before done regarding my religion, which I believe had a tendency to make me a better woman." The date of the ordinance was December 13, 1863, and she was not yet 17. The next months detail a game of cat and mouse between Ellis and Milford which included, for Milford, an ongoing courtship with Miss Eldredge and, for Ellis, an engagement with Zebulon Jacobs whose ardor cooled considerably when Ellis, lacking a home in the city, felt that she could not presume upon her friends for a protracted |
