This brief epitome of the rules and regulations that were to guide us, will give the thoughtful reader a key to the wonderful influence of President Young and the Twelve Apostles. The Saints were intensely religious and their peculiar faith in prophets and present and continuous revelation had stirred up the anger and prejudice of their Christian neighbors until it culminated in the martyrdom of Joseph and Hyrum Smith and the expulsion of the Saints from Nauvoo. Americans, and in many instances the near and direct descendants of Revolution sires, cast out from American civilization because they believed in the visitation of angels and persisted in worshiping God according to the dictates of their own conscience. It was on the first of March, 1846, only two weeks after leaving Nauvoo, that the Saints broke camp and moved forward in two general divisions, under the leadership respectively of Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball. Their course was westward over the rolling prairies of Iowa. Only too soon did they find every hollow to be a mud hole, in which the wagons would sink to the axle. But having started, they could do no better than "double teams" and go slow. Often they would not make over three miles a day, and what added to their discomfort was the continuous rain which wet those who were walking to the skin, and even beat through the wagon covers, wetting and chilling the sick and feeble. These conditions gave rise to acts of heroism as noble as were ever recorded. I remember one notable instance: Orson Spencer was a graduate from an eastern college, who having studied for the ministry, became a popular preacher in the Baptist Church. Meeting with a "Mormon" elder, he became acquainted with the teachings of Joseph Smith and accepted them. Before doing so, however, he and his highly educated young wife counted the cost, laid their hearts on the altar and made the sacrifice! How few realize what it involved to become a "Mormon" in those early days! Home, friends, occupation, popularity, all that makes life pleasant, were gone. Almost over night they were strangers to their own kindred. After leaving Nauvoo, his wife, ever delicate and frail, sank rapidly under the ever accumulating hardships. The sorrowing husband wrote imploringly to the wife's parents, asking them to receive her into their home until the Saints should find an abiding place. The answer came, "Let her renounce her degrading faith and she can come back, but never until she does." When the letter was read to her, she asked her husband to get his Bible and to turn to the Book of Ruth and read the first chapter, sixteenth and seventeenth verses: "Entreat me not to leave thee or to return from following after thee; for whither thou goest I will go, and where thou lodgest I will lodge. Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God."