"I thank you all for your sympathetic, kind and generous feelings manifested through the letters I have received. I must also beg you to exercise to me a spirit of benevolence and charity, over my apparent negligence, at times, in not being as prompt as desirable in answering your communications. For while I profoundly respect and appreciate your kindness, it is not always convenient for me to send an immediate reply, as I have daily to attend to all my official duties as when in my office at home. "In regard to my position and that of my brethren who are with me, I am happy to inform you that we now are, and always have been, during our exile, supplied with everything that is necessary to our comfort and convenience. Go where we will, we have good accommodations, plenty of food and the necessaries of life, kind and sympathetic friends, and the best of treatment. I am also happy in the belief that you are comfortably situated. If there is anything that any of you require and you will inform me, I shall be happy to supply it, if within my power. Some of you have written that you 'would like to have a peep at me.' I heartily reciprocate that feeling, and would like to have a 'peep' at you on this occasion; but in my bodily absence my spirit and peace shall be with you. "God bless you all, in time and throughout the eternities to come, is the prayer of your affectionate husband, father and friend in the new and everlasting covenant-- "JOHN TAYLOR." CHAPTER XLVI. REFLECTIONS--DEATH OF SOPHIA TAYLOR--DETERMINATION TO BRING ABOUT AN ISSUE--A VIOLENT ONE PREFERRED--HALF MASTING EPISODE--THE COURSE OF THE G. A. R.--WARLIKE PREPARATIONS FOR PIONEER DAY--FLAGS AT HALF MAST THROUGHOUT THE UNION--EXPRESSIONS OF LOVE AND CONFIDENCE--LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR. Such was the man whom the United States officials in Utah thought it necessary to hunt down like an atrocious felon, and even put a price upon his head for his apprehension! This is the man adjudged unworthy by the Edmunds law to vote or hold office in the United States! This is the man who must be driven from his family and the comforts of home to satisfy the clamor of an unthinking, prejudiced populace, aroused to a frenzy of excited intolerance by misrepresentation and an appeal to passion! It is a sad comment on the subserviency of our national legislators to have it to say that they yielded a ready submission to the clamors of the multitude, and steadily refused to investigate the charges against the Latter-day Saints before enacting the proscriptive legislation under which President Taylor and men of like character suffered.