CHAPTER II.
MY FIRST INTRODUCTION TO MORMONISM.
During my residence in France, my parents had left St. Heliers and returned to Southampton, England. To visit them now I had to take a sailing vessel from Portrieux to the Isle of Jersey, and thence I could take the steamer to Southampton.
Monsieur and Madame D——, together with the two little girls, accompanied me in their private carriage to Portrieux, a distance of forty miles, in order to confide me safely to the captain’s care. As they wished me “bon voyage” and embraced me affectionately, Mons. D—— handed me a valuable purse for pocket-money during my absence, and they all exhibited great anxiety for my welfare, saying over and over again au revoir, as they entered their carriage to return to their happy home;—thereby implying that this was not a final adieu, but that we should soon meet again.
I cannot tell why it was, but I experienced at that moment a painful feeling of mental indecision about the future. I had no real reason to doubt my return to France, and the certainty of a warm welcome when I should again greet those dear ones who were now leaving me in tears; but my mind was troubled by a vague feeling of uncertainty which made me anything but happy. Filial affection and a sense of duty drew me towards my parents in England; while a feeling of gratitude, and, I think, another and more tender sentiment, turned the current of my thoughts towards the happy home at St. Brieux.
It was not necessary for me to stop in Jersey for more than a few hours, but I wanted to revisit the scenes of my childhood’s happy days, and to speak again with those whom I had known and loved in early life. In later years the scenes and memories of childhood seem like the imaginings of a pleasant dream. A sweet charm is thrown around all that we then said and did; and the men and women who then were known to us are pictured in our recollection as beings possessing charms and graces such as never belonged to the common-place children of earth. The glamour of a fairy wand is over all the past history of mankind; but upon nothing does it cast so potent a spell as upon the personal reminiscences of our own infant years. To me that little island had charms which no stranger could ever have discovered; and even now, after the lapse of so many long, eventful years I often feel an earnest wish to visit again those rock-bound shores, to listen to the everlasting murmur of the wild, wild waves, to watch the distant speck-like vessels far away upon the swelling ocean, and to drink in the invigorating breezes which seem to give life and energy to every pulsation of the living soul.
But I must not theorize: life has been to me too earnest and too painful to admit of much sentiment or fancy as I recall the past. Little as I thought it, during the short visit which I paid to my birthplace the web of destiny was being woven for me in a way which I could not then have conjectured even in a dream.
At St. Heliers I heard for the first time of the Latter-day Saints, or Mormonites, as they were more familiarly called; but I cannot express how perfectly astonished I was when I learned that my father, mother, sisters, and one of my brothers had been converted to the new faith.
It was my own brother-in-law who told me this. He himself, with my sister, were “Apostate” Mormons. They had been baptized into the Mormon Church, but became dissatisfied, and abandoned it. The St. Heliers branch of the Latter-day Saints had had a turbulent experience. Their first teachings had been a mixture of Bible texts about the last days, and arguments about the millennium, the return of the Jews to Palestine, the resurrection of the dead, and a new revelation and a new prophet; but the improper conduct of some of the elders had disgusted the people with their doctrines, and the tales of wickedness which I heard were, if true, certainly sufficient to justify them in rejecting such instructors.
The more I heard of this strange religion the more I was troubled; yet, as I knew my parents were devoted Christians, I could hardly believe that Mormonism was such a vile delusion and imposture as it had been represented to me, or they would never have accepted it: still it was possible that they had been led astray by the fascinations of a new religion.