Three years is but a fleeting season to the mature, and is as a day to the aged; but to youth three years stretch out with apparent never-ending length. Three years of rapid history had been written in Utah since that vivid day in the tops of the mountains when A. O. Smoot, Porter Rockwell and Judson Stoddard had brought to the happy camp the terrible news of the coming of Johnston's army. Three years! Camp Floyd with its surging life, its frequent deaths, and its story of blunder and pathos had passed into history. The site where it once stood now lay desolate and burning beneath the hot summer sun. Weeds covered the rude foundations of the adobe and tented homes, and only the lonely prairie dog frequented the once busy streets. The soldiers had departed to the East, secession having already begun to rear its horrid shape, and only for the rich stores of a hundred rare comforts which they had sold in their hurried departure for less than a song, would anyone remember their unhappy visit.
Two years of peace and plenty had built up the village of the Great Salt Lake into a modest inland city. The trees along the sidewalks were heavy now with July verdure. The busy hum of industry throbbed in even beats along the city's arteries. The blacksmith whistled at his forge. The well-bucket creaked merrily in its frequent passage to the cool waters beneath, and the children sang as they went to and fro to school, or lingered in the shade of the cottonwood trees. It was the evening before the Fourth of July, 1860, and the hands of maid and matron were busy in swift preparation for such a celebration of local peace and prosperity as had not been theirs for years.
"Have you noticed what a change there is in Dian, the last year?" said Rachel Winthrop to Aunt Clara, as the two stood ironing in Aunt Clara's cosy kitchen.
"How changed?" asked Aunt Clara.
"Oh, she's so much softer and sweeter to everybody, and she is really making herself the friend of every poor girl in the ward. Why, I told her brother the other day that Diantha looked like another girl; she is so changed. She wants to do so much for me, and she is so good to the children, and you know that is unlike what she used to be. She was not unkind, only indifferent. She didn't show me much friendship, even if I was her sister-in-law, for I think she thought herself a little better and smarter than I. But she is mighty good to me now, and I love her a thousand times better for it, although I always loved her and was proud of her."
"I don't find Diantha is changed," answered Aunt Clara's gentle voice. "Don't you think that it is only that some of her latent powers and gifts are beginning to be developed? And then she has always been a reserved young lady, and while never uncivil or haughty, she is undemonstrative, and as young people are, concerned only with life as it affected her."
"Ah, Aunt Clara, you are always thinking the best of everybody. You never can see any fault in any one."
"Maybe I see the fault, but I see so much of the virtue mixed up with it that it quite obscures the small defect. I often think the latent possibilities, if once they are waked up in any soul, will lead us to eternal perfection. It is only that some natures are never awakened; but they go on and on, asleep in their inner souls, and only the body is awake and alive."
"Well, I have proved that God will help even the weakest of us to improve and get strong, if we will continually seek Him for help and light. Of course, any one as strong as Diantha will naturally be mighty good or pretty mean."
"Well, to me Diantha has always been one of the sweetest, strongest, and purest of girls. She is somewhat impulsive, but she has such admirable control of herself, people call it common-sense, that she rarely does anything silly or even unwise. And whoever saw her mean or small? She has had and still has faults, but they are like her own self, never small or spiteful. She loves deeply when she does love. Out of the fires of affliction, poor, proud motherless Diantha is rising to a higher, purer and more consecrated life. The death of Ellen has taught her to conform her life more to the standards of Christ and less to the promptings of a self-centered heart. She will make a grand woman, and a noble wife and mother."