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Show 22 composition, she got "best" marks. To a dime-novel mentality it might seem that Ellis, receiving President Young's daily attentions in many kindnesses and long conversations, was being groomed to become another of his wives. Such was not the case. It appears that a notion of this sort never crossed her mind and that his interest in her was purely paternal. Ellis frequently thanked her Heavenly Father "for his great goodness in giving me so kind a friend." From what we have seen in Ellis's account of the social customs of the times, especially with regard to the selection of partners for an evening of dancing, there is no connotation of "dating" in the present-day sense. Those missionaries who were honored at balls and provided with young women partners from the local communities were, in the main, married men. There is no suggestion of anything but the most acceptable and circumspect social behavior. A few weeks later Ellis sat with Maggie Curtis and Maria Young in the theater looking down over a sea of faces and trying to identify someone they knew. They saw, sitting on one side of the hall, Milford Shipp, his mother and sister Flora. Across the hall in another group were Milford's wife and her father. Maggie and Maria commented that Milford was very "unkind" to his wife-an idea totally rejected by Ellis. In mid November Ellis called on Flora Shipp and exchanged a few words with her brother Milford, later that evening learning that "his wife had left him." |
