He possessed superb self-control, which, with his nice sense of justice and honor, enabled him to be remarkably successful in the patriarchal order of marriage. Each wife was treated as the equal of the others, and with her children shared equally in the blessings and material advantages he was able to bestow upon them. The social circle offered him an opportunity for the exercise of all his generous impulses. He delighted in family gatherings, in neighborhood feasts, and the reunions of friends, especially of those tried and true. His genial manners, his delightful conversation, his powers as a vocalist, together with his great experience, and an inexhaustible fund of humor made him a central figure and often the very life of these social gatherings. Such was the character of President John Taylor; such the qualities of his mind; such his public and domestic virtues: and if, as an old English writer hath it, the great man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns; and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God, is most unfaltering--the name of JOHN TAYLOR must be written high up on the column of fame where the names of the great are enshrined, for in all these things he was pre-eminent. Footnotes 1. I John v., 7, 8. 2. The poem will be found in Parley P. Pratt's Autobiography, p. 500. 3. The Seer is published in the Latter-day Saints' Hymn Book, p. 337. CHAPTER XLIX. FUNERAL CEREMONIES--TESTIMONIES OF PRESIDENT TAYLOR'S FELLOW LABORERS--FINAL RESTING PLACE OF THE CHAMPION OF LIBERTY. The morning of Friday, July 29, 1887, dawned over Salt Lake Valley, rosy and beautiful; but it was a day of sadness in the chief city of the Saints, and throughout Israel. It was the day appointed for the funeral services of President Taylor. Shortly after day-light had broken over the eastern mountains, vehicles loaded with people could be seen coming into the city from all directions to do honor to the great departed. Later special trains loaded to their utmost capacity brought in those too far from the city to reach it with teams.