We have all been told of the shield, over the appearance of which, in ancient times, two warriors quarreled, only to discover at the last that it presented an entirely different side to each. Is there not a possibility that, after all has been said and done, we may find there are also two sides to the Mormon question? History, we say, points with unerring finger to bloody deeds and insubordination. In one long procession they pass before us, "Mountain Meadow Massacre," "Danite Raids," "Bloody Atonement," political intrigues and gross depravity. They have been called a blot upon our Western civilization, and today the map of Utah is presented with a huge octopus disfiguring its fair proportions, and whose tentacles reach out into adjoining states. We have surely told you how unreliable are the stories told us of early pioneer days beyond the Mississippi, and how fabulous are legends which come to us of its early settlers. We have not considered how large a part the prejudice, which always follows a religious belief that deviates even in the least from what is known as orthodox, has played in the lurid tales with which our too eager ears have been regaled. We have fallen into the same error for which we censure the ancient knights; we have neglected to look upon the other side of the shield. What sad tales of persecution and long suffering we find here. Tragedies as sad as any in Reformation days. From Kirtland to Nauvoo, and across the trackless prairie they were driven, their weary way marked by the graves of those whose physical strength was not sufficient, until they reached at last what, to them, was a promised land, the valley of the great Salt Lake. Desolate and unpromising as it was, they have made it blossom {197} as the rose. To quote a recent descriptive work, "By industry as remarkable as it was well directed, the desert was converted into an oasis, and the bare earth, with its poverty of sands and sage brush, was made to cover its nakedness with the green vestures of an almost unexampled fecundity." How much truth there is in all that is urged against them, and how mistaken we may be as to their motives and the underlying principles which dominate their rough and rugged exterior, those of us who are enough interested must determine for ourselves. Strange, is it not, that we hear so little mention of the horrors of Haun's Mill, and so few detailed accounts of the mid-winter expulsion from Nauvoo? General Thomas L. Kane, of Philadelphia, visited their deserted city soon after their enemies had driven them away, and in a lecture delivered on the subject before the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, used these words: