The incident which more particularly specialized this departure of President Kimball to my mind, was the fact that my brother John, now the patriarch, and then a boy of about twelve years, accompanied President Kimball and family on their pilgrimage into the unknown wilderness, leaving us in Nauvoo in great fear and doubt as to whether we should ever see them again or not. This made an indelible impression upon my mind, and ever since there seemed to be inseverable ties connecting us with President Kimball and his family. In 1848 we crossed the plains in a subdivision of President Kimball's company. He baptized me in City Creek, in 1850, where the junction of East and North Temple streets now is. In July, 1852, while attending a meeting which was held in Salt Lake City, my mother was taken sick and went to the home of President Kimball, where she remained during her last illness; under the care of Aunt Vilate. This brought me almost constantly for months directly in contact with President Kimball and family. It was here I became more familiar with his home life and habits. I was greatly impressed and moved by his manner of praying in his family. I have never heard any other man pray as he did. He did not speak to the Lord as one afar off, but as if conversing with him face to face. Time {248} and again I have been so impressed with the idea of the actual presence of God, while he was conversing with him in prayer, that I could not refrain from looking up to see if he were actually present and visible. While President Kimball was very strict in his family, he was ever kind and tender towards them. I sometimes thought he was even kinder to me than to his own boys. I have heard him reprove them, but no word of reproof ever fell from his lips upon me. Later, through him, I was sent on my first mission. No better or kinder thing was ever done for me. It gave me four years of experience and seasoning which fixed my whole course of life, and it came just at the right time to the boy that I was. Later I was associated with him in the Endowment House, where I served with him and under his direction for years. This brought me into the most intimate relation with him, and gave to each of us the most complete and perfect opportunity of becoming thoroughly acquainted with each other. I learned to love him with the truest love, and the many evidences of his love and confidences in me are beyond all question. My latest recollections of him are associated with a most unusual call made upon a number of brethren in 1861, by President Brigham Young, to accompany him on a mission to Provo. Among these were Heber C. Kimball, Wilford Woodruff, Abraham O. Smoot, Elijah F. Sheets, George G. Bywater and myself. These brethren all located in Provo with President Young, and those of the number possessed of means (Presidents Young and Kimball, and Elders Smoot and Sheets) proceeded at once to build themselves homes there.