--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - S. T. Coleridge collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 1 number: 3 published: 1898-01 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'S. T. Coleridge, "The Exchange," *Improvement Era* 1, no. 3 (January 1898): 188.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera13unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera13unse start_page: 188 end_page: 188 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1898-01) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera13unse publication_year: 1898 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1898, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Exchange 188 IMPKOVEMEN'I ERA. of adventure, and Antony Hope of love and adventure, mixed; that no father or mother need fear to place in their children's hands stories written by Mrs. Alcott. "The prose story," says a recent writer, "comes close to the heart of the world, gets into the pulses of the people, lounges in the slippered ease of the drawing room, swings in the summer hammock, circulates in the brain of the day, airs its opinions, its theories and philosophies through human lips in a hundred lands, and is read, read, read!" Yes, the world reads fiction. If one has a message to deliver, he puts it in a novel, into a living, breathing thing. The Latter-day Saints have a great message to the world. What a field is here for the pen of the novelist. As Tennyson says: "Truth in closest words shall fail, When truth embodied in a tale, Shall enter in at lowly doors." THE EXCHANGE. We pledgediour hearts, my love and I- I in my arms the maiden clasping; I could not tell the reason why, But, oh! I trembled like an aspen. Her father's love she bade me gain; I went and shook like any reed! I strove to act the man — in vain! We had exchanged our hearts indeed. S. T. Coleridge.