Shall I attempt to describe the scene at Nauvoo on that memorable evening? If I could, surely you would weep, whatever may be your faith or skepticism, if the feelings of humanity are lodged in your bosom; all prejudice and mirth would slumber, till the eye of pity had bedewed the bier, and the heart had found relief in lamentation. Before another day dawned, the messenger bore the tidings into the afflicted city; the picket guards of the city heard the whisper of murder in silent amazement, as the messenger passed into the city. There the pale muslin signal for gathering the troops hung its drooping folds from the Temple spire (as if partaking of nature's sadness), and made tremulous utterance to the humble soldiery to muster immediately. As the dawn made the signal visible, and the bass tone of the great drum confirmed the call, fathers, husbands, and minor sons, all seized the broken fragment of a dodger, or a scanty bone, for the service that might be long and arduous before their return, or swallowed some thickened milk (as might be the case), and fled to the muster ground; the suspicious mother and children followed to the door and window, anxious to see the gathering hosts emerge from their watch-posts and firesides, where rest and food were scanted to the utmost endurance. The troops continued to arrive, and stood in martial order, with a compressed lip and a quick ear. They waited with deathly but composed silence, to hear the intelligence that mournful spirits had saddened their hearts with during the night. The speaker stood up in the midst, not of a uniform soldiery of hirelings, for they had no wages; their clothing was the workmanship of the diligent domestic--the product of wife and daughters' arduous toil; their rations {285} were drawn from the precarious supplies earned in the intervals between preaching to the states and nations of the earth, and watching against the intrusions and violence of mobs. The speaker announced the martyrdom of the Prophet and Patriarch, and paused under the heavy burden of the intelligence.