| 623 TIMES AND SEASONS
"TRUTH WILL PREVAIL"
Vol. 3. No. 4.] CITY OF NAUVOO, ILL. DEC. 15, 1841 [Whole No. 40.
TIMES AND SEASONS
CITY OF NAUVOO
WEDNESDAY DEC. 15, 1841.
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Letter From P. P. Pratt.
Manchester, Aug. 12, 1841
To the Authorities and Members of the church of the saints in Nauvoo and vicinity, and to my old friends and associates in the kingdom of Jesus Christ:-Greeting:-
Dearly beloved,
It seemeth good unto me after an absence of two years, to stir up my own memory and yours, by addressing a few lines to you as a token of our mutual love, and of my lasting remembrance and respect. How often while surrounded with the objects of a foreign land and engaged in the busy scenes of life, surrounded with myriads of smiling and friendly faces, I call to mind the scenes of other days, the friends of my youth, or the companions of the morning of my life. How often I imagine while surveying the countenance of some of my new acquaintance, or gazing upon the congregation of rejoicing hundreds, (who were strangers to me but yesterday, but who are made nigh by the blood of Christ,) that I behold in their features some outlines of those faces which I have beheld in other lands, and with which I have rejoiced amid other scenes. One looks like Newel Knights, another like John Murdock, a third resembles Lyman Wight, and a fourth reminds me of Ezekiel or Hezekiah Peck (of Colesville) a fifth seems to resemble E. Partridge or Isaac Morley; but on a more minute examination, alas! the illusion vanishes as a dream of the morning: it is not the heart or hand of these old friends that I embrace; but some near acquaintance-dear to my heart as a saint; but not endeared by so many kindred scenes of mutual joy and sorrow. Thus, while otherwise happy in the performance of duty, and in the enjoyments of good society I long after my own native country, and the friends of my youth, yea, my bosom yearns, and my heart, as it were, fires within me.
But I must say with the poet:
"Former friends, how oft, I've sought them
Just to cheer the drooping mind;
But they're gone like leaves of autumn
Driven before the dreary wind."
Yes, they are gone, many of them to Eternity-worn out by the rolling wheels of time, and by hardship and exposure, for the cause of truth, or cut down by sudden death as martyrs in the cause of God, they sleep where wo and sorrow can never reach them more, and where oppression can never come. Their spirits mingle in the purer scenes of joys celestial-mid immortal throngs, but this is our sorrow that in this mortal life we shall see their faces no more.
I am now 34 years of age-next year I pass the narrow straight of middle life, the half way house between life's opening and its close. I stand as it were on a pinnacle between two worlds, and hardly know to which I belong-perhaps my old acquaintance are as numerous in heaven as on earth, and I hardly know in the division of my affections, to which I am the most attached.
It is now eleven years since I first embraced the fulness [fullness] of the gospel: three small branches, consisting of about fifty member in all, were then the only people connected as Latter Day Saints. I was one of those who took the first mission to the western states, in which the fulness [fullness] of the gospel was first introduced into Ohio, (commencing at Kirtland,) Indiana, Illinois and Missouri, and into the Indian territory, among the Lamanites.
When countless millions shall throng the courts of the New Jerusalem which is soon to be built in Jackson county, Missouri, upon the consecrated spot, then perhaps it may be remembered that in 1830, in the depth of a howling winte [winter]
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