The Church was then directed by President Woodruff and his two Councillor's, George Q. Cannon and Joseph F. Smith. But President Woodruff was as helpless in the political world as a nun. He was a gentle, earnest old man, patiently ingenuous and simple-minded, with a faith in the guidance of Heaven that was only greater than my father's because it was unmixed with any earthly sagacity. He had the mind, and the appearance, of a country preacher, and even when he was "on the underground" he used to do his daily "stint" of farm labor, secretly, either at night or in the very early morning. He was a successful farmer (born in Connecticut), of a Yankee shrewdness and industry. He recognized that in order to get a crop of wheat, it was necessary to do something more than trust in the Lord. But in administering the affairs of the Church, he seemed to have no such sophistication. I can see him yet, at the meetings of the Presidency, opening his mild blue eyes in surprised horror at a report of some new danger threatening us. "My conscience! My conscience!" he would cry. "Is that so, brother!" When he was assured that it was so, he would say, resignedly: "The Lord will look after us!" And then, after a silence, turning to his First Councillor, he would ask: "What do you think we ought to do, Brother George Q.?" The Second Councillor, Joseph F. Smith, sat at these meetings, in a saturnine reserve and silence, either nursing his concealed thought or having none. When a decision had been suggested, he was appealed to and added his assent. It always seemed to me that he was sulkily sleepy; but this impression may have come from the contrast of the First Councillor's mental alertness and the bright cheerfulness of the President--who never, to my knowledge, showed the slightest bitterness against anybody. President Woodruff believed that all the persecutions of the Mormons were due to the Devil's envy of the Lord's power as it showed itself in the establishment of the Mormon Church: and he assumed that the Gentiles did the work they were tempted to do against us, because the Holy Spirit had not yet ousted the evil from their souls. He had no fear of the ultimate triumph of the Church, because he had no fear of the ultimate triumph of God. Whenever he could escape for a day from the worldly duties of his office, he went fishing! When the progress of the Cullom-Struble bill began to make its threatening advance, my father went secretly to Washington; and a short time afterwards, word came to me in Ogden, through the Presidency, that he wished me to arrange my business affairs for a long absence from Utah, and follow him to the capital.