The Great Experience BY JULIA FARR Author of "Venna Hastings" "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience." I. P. HENRY THE DESERET NEWS SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 1920 LOVINGLY DEDICATED TO MY EPHRAIM FRIENDS MRS. CATHERINE H. THOMPSON AND FAMILY PREFACE Have you been a convert to the "Mormon" faith? Have you left your home-land and started out for the valley in the mountains, leaving friends behind, and looking forward with an awful loneliness to the strange new land where life must begin over again with only the Lord to know and love you? And have you found, on coming to Zion, a _real_ friend--one who opens heart and home to welcome the convert, and give that first cheering hope to the tired one, just come from the world's persecutions? If you have had that experience, readers, you can understand with what tenderness I think of Ephraim, where I experienced my first welcome, my first friends in Zion. In trying to think of a suitable setting for my heroine's home life, Ephraim came instantly to my mind, because it was here that I met the real "Mormon" spirit, which strengthened me to bear the disappointments of the morrow. This little city will always be to me one of the chosen spots in God's Zion. I would not have it thought that any of my characters are supposed to be those of Ephraim people. The story is one of fiction, the pioneer stories excepting. These stories are true, and belong to two prominent Utah families. Julia Farr. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I. "Even a child is known by his doings."--Prov. 20:11. CHAPTER II. No great truth was ever born into the world, without the throes of suffering of those who bore it. CHAPTER III. A child's love is as proportionately great as a woman's. CHAPTER IV. Society's Nothingness, and its Sacrifice. CHAPTER V. Edith's Choice. CHAPTER VI. The glamor gone, what is left? CHAPTER VII. "Go, preach the Gospel to all the world." CHAPTER VIII. The Way of a Missionary. CHAPTER IX. Betty's new friends. CHAPTER X. "God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the wise." CHAPTER XI. The Treachery of the World. CHAPTER XII. Indifference begets indifference. Love begets love. CHAPTER XIII. Friendship's Claim. CHAPTER XIV. A contrast--The husband and the lover. CHAPTER XV. Spirit upon Spirit. CHAPTER XVI. Away from the world, soul meets soul. CHAPTER XVII. Edith's Release. CHAPTER XVIII. The dream of the past. CHAPTER XVIX. Betty finds her opposite. CHAPTER XX. The time we deem ourselves the strongest, we are often reminded of our weakness. CHAPTER XXI. The Efficacy of Faith. CHAPTER XXII. To save a soul. CHAPTER XXIII. "'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all." CHAPTER XIX. Unalloyed Love. THE GREAT EXPERIENCE CHAPTER I. "Even a child is known by his doings."--Prov. 20:11.