October 1876
12 October 1876 • Thursday
Thursday Oct. 12. 1876, I went early in the morning to the Endowment House to be baptized for my dead.1 I was baptized thirteen times and got through it much better than I had anticipated. In the afternoon went again to perform the sealing ordinance2 with Ort. who stood for Bishop Newel K. Whitney. I was very weary in the evening– and could scarcely keep up.
13 October 1876 • Friday
Friday Oct. 13. I went over to Sister Eliza R. Snow in the morning and asked her if she had prepared the article for the paper I expected to publish– she declined and of course I myself was obliged to go ahead alone. I wrote the article3 and had it set up in type. I worked very hard all that day reading proof writing etc. at night weary and sad |I came home very late and with such an aching heart– feeling that my dearest friends did not understand me; and that there was a void in my heart that none of my friends filled though I had so many of them. On every hand I receive kindness and attention courtesy and all the chivalrous respect I could wish for perhaps more than I deserve yet over my spirit comes such an indefinable yearning for some demonstration of delicate tenderness– O that I had ever known that peculiar phase of intimate companionship which in my fanciful and idealistic imaginings I have pictured as the ecstacy of the supreme realization of complete Elysium. Lou had her endowments today.
14 October 1876 • Saturday
Sat. Oct. 14. Another day of anxiety and toil– Mellie came up and told me she had sold her lots, and wanted me to advise her [p. 95]
[Lines of verse on a loose sheet]
Our lives without friendship would be incomplete;
The trust of affection is sacred and sweet.
The beauty of nature in every scene
Would pale and grow bleak were it ever so green
Without those true <loving> friends so near and so dear,
Whose presence enchants even honors that seemed drear
In whose
Whose hearts every day some new charm reveal
Which [modesty self they fain] would conceal
Which their
Which to our finer natures with true north appeal
[p. 1]
Our lives without friendship would be incomplete
The ties of affection are sacred and sweet
The beauty of nature in every scene
Would pale and grow drear
were green
Were it not for true friends the near
And the dreary
Whose presence enchant every
Who enchant by their presence
Who enchant and enliven even hours that are dreary
Who almost enchant the hours
[p. 2]
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Footnotes
Footnotes
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[1]The practice of performing proxy baptisms for deceased persons in sacred houses or temples began in Nauvoo, Illinois, and continued in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City and later in dedicated temples. (Bishop, “‘What Has Become of Our Fathers?’” 92–93; Brown, “‘Temple Pro Tempore,’” 18–21.)
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[2]“Sealing,” as the term is used by Latter-day Saints, “refers to the marriage of a husband and wife and to the joining together of children and parents in relationships that are to endure forever.” (Paul V. Hyer, “Sealing . . . Temple Sealings,” in Ludlow, Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 3:1289–1290.) EBW, using the end sheets of her Nauvoo and Iowa trail diary of 1844–1846, recorded herself as being sealed in marriage to Newel K. Whitney in the Nauvoo Temple in 1846. On this occasion the participants probably “sealed” the newly baptized relatives into Bishop Newel K. Whitney’s family.
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[3]In an article on grain storage, EBW editorialized on goals and methods. Brigham Young had recently called EBW to lead women in gathering and preserving wheat for long-term needs. (“Sisters Be in Earnest,” Woman’s Exponent, 15 Oct. 1876, 5:76; see also Derr et al., First Fifty Years, 399.)