Parley P. Pratt, Apostle, 1835–1857
It was Joseph Smith who
taught me how to prize the endearing relationships of father
and mother, husband and wife; of brother and sister, son and
daughter. It was from him that I learned that the wife of my
bosom might be secured to me for time and all eternity; and
that the refined sympathies and affections which endeared us
to each other emanated from the fountain of divine eternal
love. . . . I had loved before, but I knew not why. But now
I loved—with a pureness—an intensity of elevated, exalted feeling.
Autobiography of Parley P. Pratt, ed. Parley P. Pratt Jr. (1938), 259–60; paragraph divisions altered.
I have never seen a
woman in my life, who would endure every species of fatigue
and hardship, from month to month, and from year to year,
with that unflinching courage, zeal, and patience, which
[Emma Smith] has ever done . . . she has been tossed upon
the ocean of uncertainty—she has breasted the storms of
persecution, and buffeted the rage of men and devils, which
would have borne down almost any other woman.
Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and His Progenitors for Many Generations (1853), 169.
