Previous to taking my departure for New Zealand I went out to Ashfield to bid Brother Armstrong and his family farewell. Again I returned late in the evening. I thoughtlessly threw myself upon the couch, and almost in the very second I was seized by the destroyer. The experience was the same as on the other occasions, except that it was much more powerful and painful. I believed for a moment that I must die; but once more I was restored by my prayer to heaven. The sensations I suffered in these seizures I never can forget. To speak of them even at this hour causes a chill of horror to pass over my being, and as a rule I feel a dreadful pain attacking my heart.
I did not speak of these experiences to anyone in Sydney, nor to anyone else for a long time. I was inexperienced in these matters, and I thought it wise to keep my own counsel. But nearly a year afterward I received a letter from Brother May, who had returned to Sydney and had stopped at the house of Brother Nichols, while I was in New Zealand. He had occupied as a bed the couch whereon I had slept; and he informed me that he had been seized by evil spirits in the night, dragged from his bed, and tortured. After this reinforcement of my own views I wrote to Brother May, informing him of what had occurred at the house on three separate occasions when I was lying upon that couch. I felt then that not only was the city of Sydney an oppressive place for the Elders, but that the house where we had stopped, though occupied by a man who professed the faith, offered a welcome to evil influences. Such an opinion was substantiated later when Nichols and his wife turned Brother May out of the house, and then apostatized and joined the Josephites.
Although they had treated me very kindly I always felt under a restraint when I was on their premises; and the event showed that they preferred association with the powers of darkness to the friendship and company of the Elders of the Church.
Mrs. Nichols and her eldest son are dead; and the man, if alive, leads what I imagine must be a lonely and unsatisfactory life. I am convinced that he knows the gospel to be true; for I have had proof that he possesses this knowledge. Realizing this, I imagine that his mind must be in a dreadful state of remorse and anxiety.
The day before I was to take the steamer Wakatipu I went to the post office at Sydney to mail some letters. While standing at the stamp window a man walked quickly up through the crowd, thrust a paper under my face into the window, and cried:
"Foreign stamp—quick, please!"
He laid the paper down, and I saw the address upon it. To my amazement it was:
"JOHN ALFORD,
Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, U.S.A."
I looked at the gentleman and said:—
"I beg pardon, sir; but do you know the gentleman to whom you are sending this paper?"