Before leaving Nauvoo, he paid a visit to Emma Smith to whose life he sought to bring consolation in the hour of her bereavement. She gave him a piece of oak for a staff. The oak had been taken from Joseph's coffin. She also presented him with {228} a pair of white cotton gloves, and to his wife she gave a handkerchief. He and Mrs. Woodruff next called upon Mary Smith, widow of Hyrum, and the mother of President Joseph F. Smith. She gave Elder Woodruff several small locks of hair taken from the heads of Joseph, Hyrum, Samuel, and Don Carlos, all brothers who had passed away into the other world. Speaking of these relics Elder Woodruff says: "I also obtained some hair of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. My purpose in getting it was that I might put a part of each of these collections in the knob of my staff as a relic of those noble men, the master spirits of the nineteenth century." These relics he held as something sacred during his life time, and they are now in the possession of his family. "I next visited Mother Lucy Smith, the mother of the Prophet, and of a large family of sons. This noble mother and prophetess felt sorely grieved over the loss of her children, and lamented the cruel treatment she had received at the hands of an unfeeling world. She begged a blessing at my hands. I laid my hands upon her head and by the spirit of God pronounced upon her a blessing. This was August 23, 1844. I quote from that blessing as follows: 'Let thy heart be comforted in the midst of thy sorrow for thou shalt be held forever in honorable remembrance in the congregations of the righteous. Thou shalt be remembered in thy wants during the remainder of thy days; and when thou shalt be called upon to depart, thou shalt lie down in peace having seen the salvation of thy God who has laid the everlasting foundation for the deliverance of Israel through the instrumentality of thy sons.'" That God had made her sons the instrumentality in the opening of a new dispensation gave the aged mother an abiding consolation in the midst of her grief.