Pillar of Light

by Gerald N. Lund

  We were sorry to hear that his going to that meeting with you has further strained his relationship to his father. I remember well how Hezekiah Rogers opposed us when we were there, so your report did not come as a surprise, but it still saddened us. However, Joshua was elated at that. Not at our sadness, but that Carl and his father are fighting over this issue. He thinks Carl’s father is the only thing stopping Carl from coming out here, so he’s hoping the distance between them widens even more. It has been a bit of a surprise to all of us how strongly Joshua feels about getting Carl to come. Caroline told me this morning that he is even talking about writing to Carl directly. Unheard of for Joshua!

  Well, I do not wish to go overly long on the matter, but we were most pleased with the news. Please give Carl our love and affection. His coming with you to Missouri and Illinois earlier this year to bring us food and supplies has deeply endeared him to all of us. He is a wonderful man and a good husband and father.

  In closing, just a word or two of advice from your mother. Your last paragraphs were filled with discouragement, almost despair, about the chances of ever coming out west. You say that with the feelings now between Carl and his father, there is no way that can happen.

  I would only say this. Nine years ago, your father was stubbornly opposed to the Church, bitterly antagonistic toward Joseph, and absolutely, unbendably, unmovably against our moving to Kirtland. You will remember that well, for you too despaired that we would ever be able to follow Nathan and Lydia to Ohio. I was deeply discouraged. Then one day, while your father was in town, I began reading in the Bible. I won’t go into all the details, but I came across a passage where the Lord taught that some problems are of such size and difficulty that only prayer and fasting can bring the victory. I read it over and over. And on that day, I decided I would fast and pray about the matter. As you know, it wasn’t long after that that Martin Harris was talking to your father about selling the farm, and in a matter of a few weeks we were in Kirtland.

  Melissa, I don’t know if the Lord wants you and Carl out here with us. We would love to see it happen, but what matters is what the Lord feels is best. But I do know this. Fasting and prayer can change circumstances and hearts and outcomes. Don’t lose heart. Don’t lose faith. Importune the Lord about this.

  New Year wishes and love from all of us,

  Your loving mother

  Will Steed was agog. His eyes darted here and there and his head jerked back and forth so quickly, he was getting dizzy. He had heard men try to describe the scenes he was now seeing, but words completely paled beside the reality. He couldn’t believe the number of people. It was like trying to ford a river after a cloudburst. He kept his arms up slightly to fend off the crowds swirling and eddying around them. Will had never imagined there could be so many people in one place at the same time. As they pushed through them, heads turned and people stared at the fair-skinned strangers who towered above them.

  Will leaned forward and shouted at his companion. “Are there so many people because of the holiday?”

  Timothy O’Malley, first mate on the Bostonia, gave him a puzzled look. “What holiday?”

  “New Year’s Day. This is New Year’s Day.”

  O’Malley laughed, tossing his head. “Not in China, it’s not, lad. They have what they call the Chinese New Year, and it’s not the same as ours. No, no holiday. This is Canton. Just a regular day in the land of China.”

  “There are always this many people?” Will asked incredulously.

  O’Malley laughed again. “Wait until just before dark when the factories let out. You can almost walk on their shoulders.”

  “Hey, Guailous! Wanna buy chop carving?”

  Will turned. It was a boy, maybe ten or twelve. He was pushing his way through the people toward them.

  “Chop carving. Veddy cheap. Veddy nice.”

  O’Malley slowed, turning to Will. “You want a chop carving?”

  “What’s that?”

  He smiled. “You said you wanted to buy something for your family. I’d recommend this. It’s something you’ll never find in America.” He turned to the boy and nodded.

  Grinning widely, the Chinese lad pointed over the heads of the crowd to somewhere down the street. “You come. I show.”

  As they fell in behind him, Will moved up alongside the first mate. “What’s a Gwai-loh?”

  “Guailou? That’s a foreigner. A white person.”

  The boy heard them. “You Englee?” he demanded.

  “No,” O’Malley said easily, “American.”

  “Ah, Mericee.” He was obviously pleased, and Will understood why. China and Great Britain were at war. O’Malley had explained it to Will. They were calling it the Opium War. China had been ruled by the Manchu dynasty for almost two hundred years. During that same time, England had become a great colonial power. As Will had learned in Liverpool, a common saying among the English was, “The sun never sets on the English empire.” The Manchus, like most other Chinese rulers, deeply distrusted foreigners and ruled that the only port open for trading with the outside world would be Canton. Britain, flush with her conquests over France during the Napoleonic wars and with her growing industrial might, chafed under those limitations and began to press for ways to bust the doors wide open. Seeking a way to balance their trade deficit with China, British merchants began shipping in opium grown on their vast estates in India. There was a great demand for the drug among the huge Chinese population, and the Chinese merchants paid in silver. Alarmed at the growing numbers of their people addicted to the drug and at the huge outflow of silver, the Manchus declared the drug illegal. That only drove the market higher and made smuggling opium a highly profitable enterprise. Furious at England’s refusal to cooperate, earlier in the year the Manchus had raided dozens of British ships and seized millions of dollars’ worth of opium. England promptly declared war.

  “Would we be in danger if we were English?” Will asked in a low voice.

  The officer shook his head. “Not during the day. But it’s best not to be down one of the back streets at night. Not even if you’re American.”

  “Why? We’re not at war with them.”

  “You know that and I know that, but to the Chinese all Guailous look alike, and they don’t much like the English right now.”

  They turned into a side street and the boy grabbed O’Malley’s arm. “Here,” he said, pointing to a tiny shop built into the wall of a larger building. “Chop carving. Good deal. Veddy cheap.”

  Inside, an old man, sixty or more from his looks, sat at a small table, carving on a round plug of stone shaped like a cylinder. His hands moved rapidly, wielding a stubby knife with a short but thick metal blade. Will was surprised to see the stone flaking off almost like wood chips. On the table in front of the man was a whole collection of similar pieces of stone, two to three inches long and about an inch and one-half in diameter. Will leaned forward, fascinated. The stones were capped with intricately carved figures—a fierce-looking creature that was half lion, half eagle; a Chinese man, fat and round; a crowing rooster; an Oriental dragon.

  “Look at that,” Will breathed, moving closer and bending down to see. He reached out and touched the dragon. Barely an inch high, it was complete in every detail—flaring nostrils, scales on its body, sinuous tail. The old man hardly looked up, just kept his hands moving over the stone. “You like?” the boy asked, moving up beside Will. “Veddy nice.”

  “Look,” O’Malley said. He picked up one of the stones and turned it so Will could see the bottom of it. “This is why they call it a chop carving.” A Chinese character was etched into the bottom side of the stone. O’Malley leaned over. There was a small tin with some kind of red paste in it. He touched the stone to the paste, turned it back and forth a little to distribute the paste on the carving, then pulled it out and pressed it to the paper that covered the table. Magically, the Chinese character was imprinted on the paper.

  “Ah,” Will cried.

  The bo
y grabbed a small square of paper and thrust it at Will. “You write!”

  Will took it, not sure what the boy wanted. “Write what?”

  “He wants you to write your name,” O’Malley explained. “Then his grandfather will carve it for you. Or put the name of your mother. They’ll do whatever you want.”

  “How much?” Will asked.

  “How much?” O’Malley asked the boy.

  “One pound, one chop.”

  “No Englee,” the officer said, shaking his head. “Dollars.”

  “Three dollah,” came the instant reply. Will smiled. Since the English pound was worth about five American dollars, they had already brought the price down. But three dollars was still more than he could spend on one person. He had three people to buy for, and he made only ten dollars a month.

  O’Malley touched two of the stones. “Three dollar, two carvings.”

  The boy looked like O’Malley had just asked him to sell his grandmother. He shook his head sharply. “No. Too much. Three dollah, one carving.”

  O’Malley took Will’s arm and turned him toward the front of the little shop. “Thank you,” he called over his shoulder.

  “Wait!”

  They stopped. The boy conferred quickly with his grandfather. The old man’s face was inscrutable. The boy watched him closely, then turned back. “Five dollah, two carvings.”

  The first mate pushed Will toward the door again. “Thank you.”

  “I’ll do it for that—,” Will started, but O’Malley squeezed his arm sharply, cutting him off. They were almost back out into the street again.

  “Wait!”

  They stopped and the boy darted forward. “Three dollah, two carvings.” He held out a pen and pointed at the paper Will still held. “You write!” he commanded.

  Will was grateful to Captain Sperryman. He knew he had specifically asked O’Malley to shepherd Will on his first visit to Canton and make sure he didn’t get into trouble. Surprisingly, the ship’s officer didn’t seem to mind. He had a wife and two children back in Salem, Massachusetts, and seemed happy to do some shopping of his own. So they shopped for almost an hour while they waited for the chop carvings.

  The shops were incredible. One had hundreds of birds of every shape, size, and color, some in huge bamboo cages, others you could cup in both hands. There were spice shops and lantern shops and shops with jade, that precious stone that looked almost like glass. At a china shop, Will looked into buying his mother a set of the blue and white plates and saucers that were in such high demand in America now, but they wanted fifteen dollars and wouldn’t go any lower.

  They moved a few blocks down to the Pearl River and walked among the hundreds of little kiosks that lined the water. This proved to be absolutely fascinating to Will. O’Malley explained that the Chinese insisted that their seafood be fresh at the time of purchase, so the sellers simply kept everything alive until the moment of purchase. In jars and buckets, iron pans and tightly woven reed baskets, there was a bewildering variety of creatures from the sea. Like a proud father taking his son on a tour of some exotic zoo, O’Malley pointed out the various species—octopus, squid, crab, sea turtles, fish of every kind imaginable, eel, lobsters, shrimp.

  They passed other restaurants with items that turned Will’s stomach. Bird’s nest soup, thousand-year-old eggs. When Will nearly gagged at the sight of one of the latter, O’Malley, laughing, explained that that was just what they called them. Actually they were planted in the ground and left there for a year or so, then served in their decayed and rotted state. In one window, a slithering collection of snakes made Will fall back a step. O’Malley poked him in the ribs. “You hungry, Steed? Want some cobra steak?”

  As they moved back toward the carving shop, a sudden explosion of noise behind him jerked Will around. For a moment he thought a fire fight had erupted. It was like a hundred pistols all going off at once. “Those are called firecrackers,” O’Malley said, noting Will’s expression. “Come on, let me show you.” They moved through the crowd to where two small boys sat on the sidewalk. They carried long strings with hundreds of brightly colored sticks or twigs tied to them, only each stick was perfectly round, like a tiny little tube. Taking a coin from his pocket, O’Malley gave it to the older boy, motioning for him to do something with the sticks.

  The older boy carried a piece of a reed, from a marsh somewhere. It was smoldering, a wisp of smoke coming from its blackened end. As the younger boy undid about a third of the tiny tubes, making a separate collection of them, the older boy blew on the reed softly until it glowed. Then he touched the end of the string to the glowing tip. Will’s eyes widened as the string caught fire, sputtering and sparking. The younger boy flung the collection of little sticks away from him and jumped back. When the string of firecrackers went off, Will jumped nearly a foot, and O’Malley and the boys roared in delight. Crackling, popping, spitting fire, the little sticks danced on the ground like something possessed.

  When the last one had finally exploded, leaving clouds of blue smoke and an acrid smell hanging in the air, Will turned to O’Malley. “How much?” he asked.

  Matthew sat back in his chair, listening to Parley Pratt, who had just returned to New York City from Philadelphia, and again marveled at how the hand of the Lord could orchestrate things. The day after Wilford, John, Theodore, and Derek had sailed for England, Orson Pratt left for Philadelphia. The missionaries had been preaching in New York, but Orson was restless and felt impressed to go farther out and chose Philadelphia, about a hundred miles south of New York. To his amazement, when he arrived he found Joseph Smith. Joseph, frustrated with the slow-moving wheels of government, had left Washington, D.C., and gone north to visit the Saints in Philadelphia.

  Orson immediately sent a letter back to Parley telling him to come to Philadelphia. That had been just before Christmas. Now, three days into the New Year, Parley had returned. Matthew had taken a room next to the Pratts’ apartment so he could help Mary Ann Pratt with the children while Parley was gone. Addison Everett, one of the earliest converts in the city, and his wife had heard Parley was back and came over to hear his report. Parley’s three children were in bed, so Matthew was the youngest present.

  The room fell quiet for a few moments after Parley reported what Joseph told them about his lack of success in Washington. It was depressing to know that in spite of the Constitution, no one cared enough for justice to act in behalf of the Mormons. But then Parley reached out and took his wife’s hand. “Yet there is some wonderful news too.”

  Mary Ann Pratt looked up. “That would be nice to hear.”

  He leaned forward, peering into her eyes, his face infused with excitement. “While we were with Joseph, he spent many hours teaching us about God and the heavenly order of eternity. He said that—” He paused, almost breathless with excitement now. “Think about this. Joseph taught us that the family organization is eternal.”

  Her eyes widened. “Eternal?”

  Addison Everett leaned forward. “Eternal?” he echoed.

  “Yes,” Parley cried, “eternal! Father, mother, husband, wife. These precious relationships, which we so deeply esteem here, are not to be broken by death. They are to continue in the next life. The eternal family is the organization of heaven. Joseph called it sealing,” Parley went on. “It is part of the keys of the priesthood restored to earth by Elijah. And through these keys, a husband and a wife can be sealed together for all eternity. Parents and children can be sealed together into an eternal family unit. Think about that for a moment.”

  Matthew was thinking about it. The image of Jennifer Jo McIntire swam before his eyes and he felt them start to burn. And in that instant, he knew the doctrine was true. Of course! Would a loving God strip a man of that which meant more to him than any other living gift? Would he tear apart the one relationship that bound two people together and made them one? If so, then hollow indeed would be the victory over death. The grave would have its spoils.

  Parley
half turned, and now took both of his wife’s hands in his. “Do you understand what this means, dear Mary Ann? This fountain of love which so endears you to me and me to you comes not just from the human breast, it springs from God! And God has prepared the way so we may be joined together for the eternities.”

  Her eyes were glistening as she kept nodding to each of his statements, responding without words. Now the Apostle pulled his wife toward him, bringing her hands up to rest against his chest. “It was as though I was on fire as he spoke. The Prophet lifted a corner of the veil and allowed us to peek beneath it. I have thought of nothing else since leaving Philadelphia.”

  Suddenly his voice went very soft. “My dearest Mary Ann, I had loved you before, but I knew not why. Now I love with a pureness, with an intensity I never believed possible. My love is elevated, exalted, lifted from the transitory things of this groveling sphere and expanded like the mighty ocean. You are the wife of my bosom, an eternal, immortal companion, a kind, ministering angel sent to me as a comfort and a crown, and we shall be together forever and ever.”

  He had to stop. She was weeping now. Sister Everett was weeping. Matthew and Addison were swallowing hard themselves as they listened to the impassioned words. Parley dropped his head and kissed his wife’s hands. “That is what Joseph taught us, and that is why I rejoice with you on this day.”