Land of my birth, and home of my fathers! my earliest impressions were devoted to your praise and glory. In my riper years I have never infringed your laws or quenched the spirit of your philanthropy. You have robbed me of my houses, and my farms, and martyred my dearest friends, and stripped me of reputation, and expelled me from your borders, without the shadow of impeachment, or of trial by jury. Contrary to my strongest predilections and educational attachments, you have sought to eradicate every vestige of my patriotism, and render frigid my warmest love to everything that endeared me to the friends and citizens of the country that was ever my pride and boast! My heart still yearns fondly over the land that was marked out in the council of Heaven to be the nursery of freedom, enterprise, and genius. And now, as I recede from your borders, and from the scenes of my toils and fond attachments with my desolate family, through extensive wilds to the mountains for safety and a home, my heart overflows and bursts with the sentiment--"Oh, that thou hadst known in this thy day the things that belong to thy peace!" In the meridian of life I go from the tombs of my fathers to build and plant, where the eagle of liberty soars aloft in the sunbeams of truth! My associates are called, and tried, and chosen; they are the virtuous and honourable of all the earth; the refuse of all nations, but accepted of God and escorted by his angels. Their bosoms beat high with every noble impulse of philanthropy and virtue; they are a magnanimous people, fitted to foster and garner up the scattered virtues of the human family, and open up a safe asylum to the oppressed of all nations; they have stood in the Thermopylae, and passed the Rubicon. The Roman Mutius could deliberately burn his hand to cinders as a token of the courage of his companions; so this people have proved, indisputably, that they possess all the elements of endurance and triumph. Their most arduous and perilous conflict is passed; and millions comforted, enlightened, and redeemed will reap the reward, and enter into _their_ labours. They are worthy. They have paid the last debt which the angel informed John must be liquidated in the blood of latter-day prophets, when the just could be avenged. Judgment is given unto them, and the richest benedictions of Heaven now await in Zion the upright and noble of all nations. With sentiments of pure benevolence, I subscribe myself Your exiled friend and humble servant, ORSON SPENCER. NIGHT OF MARTYRDOM. The following articles, on the Night of the Prophet's and Patriarch's Martyrdom, together with the suffering exit of the author's lamented wife, are inserted in this volume in order to perpetuate the memories of the "just," and render to the heavens a tribute of gratitude for their manifest interest in the tried condition of Saints on earth: