In the evening the bar room was full of gentlemen, all eager to learn the news and for two hours they listened almost breathless to father's talk. The next day parties approached father and offered to load him with merchandise. This he declined; but he secured the loan of one thousand dollars--I believe from a Jewish merchant--and wasted no time in getting down to business. The first move was to buy a forty-acre field of unharvested corn. He paid four dollars an acre for the corn as it stood in the field. It was estimated to average sixty bushels to the acre. The best corn was gathered and put in bins. Heavy logs were then drawn crosswise over the field to mash down the stalks. Then a notice was posted for hogs. As a rule, they came in droves of about thirty and were bought in the bunch, at seventy-five cents a head. They would weigh from one hundred and fifty to four hundred pounds each. Father returned to Winter Quarters with a thousand head of hogs, and in this way President Young's promise to him had been realized. We read in the good old Bible of an angel giving water to Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, when the patriarch Abraham had sent them away; and when Moses led two million Hebrew bondsmen from slavery to freedom, we read of how God rained manna down from heaven for their sustenance, and so wrought upon the elements, that for forty years their garments did not wax old. And I understand that the Hebrew children to this day remember with grateful hearts those special acts of providence. Now, while I do not claim for the Latter-day Saints manifestations so marked as these, yet was there many a providential help given to us. What caused the quails to come in such tame flocks to our suffering camps on the west bank of the Mississippi river? They were so tame that many of them were caught by little children. And who led the Mormon maiden to Mr. Polk's tavern, and inspired her tongue to utter words of deep interest to citizens of St. Joseph, and thus prepared the way for my father to bring to our camps large quantities of food as sweet and nutritious as the quails or manna bestowed so providentially upon the camps of the Hebrews in the land of Palestine? I remember well the place where I first saw Wilford Woodruff. It was out in the timber west of Winter Quarters. I was driving a yoke of oxen on a sledge, after a load of wood. Father and a man by the name of Campbell were chopping. The wood was oak and hickory. There were several men in the grove chopping, among them Apostle Woodruff. A cry came for help and the men ran together. Brother Woodruff had been caught by a falling tree and pinned to another one. The tree that imprisoned him was so heavy that the men could not lift it away until they had chopped it in two.