off--I'm kind of a heavy-footed person to be on my feet all day--and
that blessed Book in my hands--such beautiful language it uses--that
verse I love so, 'He went forth among the people waving the rent of his
garment in the air that all might see the writing which he had wrote
upon the rent,'--that's sure enough Bible language, ain't it? And yet
some folks say the Book of Mormon ain't inspired. And that lovely verse
in Second Niphi, first chapter, fourteenth verse: 'Hear the words of a
trembling parent whose limbs you must soon lay down in the cold and
silent grave from whence no traveller can return.' Back home the
school-teacher got hold of that--he's an awful smarty--and he says, 'Oh,
that's from Shakespeare,' or some such book, just like that--and I just
give him one look, and I says, 'Mr. Lyman Hickenlooper, if you'll take
notice,' I says, 'you'll see those words was composed by the angel
Moroni over two thousand years ago and revealed to Joseph Smith in the
sacred light of the Urim and Thummim,' I says, and the plague-oned
smarty snickered right in my face--and say, now, what did you and your
second git a separation for?"

He was called back by the stopping of her voice, but she had to repeat
her question before he understood it. The Devil tempted him in that
moment. He was on the point of answering, "Because she talked too
much," but instead he climbed out of the wagon to walk. He walked most
of the three hundred miles in the next ten days. Nights and mornings he
falsely pretended to be deaf.

He found himself in this long walk full of a pained discouragement; not
questioning or doubting, for he had been too well trained ever to do
either. But he was disturbed by a feeling of bafflement, as might be a
ground-mole whose burrow was continually destroyed by an enemy it could
not see. This feeling had begun in Salt Lake City, for there he had seen