A FRIEND:
"He said to me one day, taking up a small stick from the ground, 'You see this stick. If it had remained down there you never would have noticed that there was any dirt clinging to it. But now that I hold it up you observe it is covered with dirt. It is just so when a man is put into office. He may be just as clean before he gets there as those around him, but his being lifted up above them makes his faults more manifest, and he is far more apt to be criticised than before.'"
The veteran Bishop, A. H. RALEIGH, speaks thus from his exile:
"Having fortunately been privileged with a personal acquaintance with the late Heber C. Kimball, from the early days of Nauvoo to the time of his decease, a period of about twenty-five years, I venture confidently to submit that no stronger or more forcible illustration of the peculiarity of his character can be presented than the notable eccentricity manifested in the subdivisions of plat E. Salt Lake City, which he fashioned by personally directing city surveyor J. W. Fox, Sen., in laying out and platting, and myself in naming the streets, while drafting the resolution which, when passed by the City Council, made it a legal survey. Though it has undergone some slight changes in the remodeling of a few lots, as also a few streets, and changing a few of these names, with a small addition to the plat, far the most of the original remains to be a lasting monument to his memory. The great variety of form and size of lots, involving corners, angles, widths and lengths of streets, together with their peculiar names, almost exhausting the names of the fruit and vegetable kingdom, are all characteristic of the man, familiarly called 'Brother Heber,' ever evincing a strong desire to imitate nature in its eternal variety and beauty; the same in his plain, easy, natural demeanor in his daily intercourse with his fellows, either in public or private life, giving evidence of the presence of one of nature's noblemen, one of the noblest works of God,—an honest man."
FATHER J. L. HEYWOOD writes from Panguitch:
"Brother Kimball was naturally of a jovial turn of mind. When working at the pottery business he would sometimes use a chip to turn his crocks, remarking that he 'did not care who stole his trade, as long as they did not steal his tools.'
"In relation to some protuberances on his forehead he remarked that they were the 'horns of Joseph' with which to push the people together, referring to his labors as an Apostle.
"President B. Young once said that Brother Kimball could go to the city of Washington, D.C., and build up a church, and the way he would do it was by beginning so small."