---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 7
number: 8
published: 1904-06
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations, "Gentle Words," *Improvement Era* 7, no. 8 (June 1904): 575.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0708unse
  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: improvementera0708unse
start_page: 575
end_page: 575
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1904-06)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0708unse
  publication_year: 1904
  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 1904, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# Gentle Words

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ADVENTURES OF A PIONEER.                             575

     The first remuneration from           my first three years of farming
venture in California, was two dollars, paid me for water melons, in
September of this year.              Fortunately, October and    November
brought to California a large number of gold hunters, coming both
by sea and land; the appetites of these people seemed to crave
nothing so much as vegetables, since some of them had, and others
were rapidly contracting, the scurvy.            They ate raw    onions, or
potatoes, with apparently as great relish as if these were nicely
flavored apples.      As   I   was    the only farmer in the territory who
had vegetables for          was much sought after by customers
                        sale,    I

from all sides; two wagons came several times from the mines,
two hundred miles distant, and bought loads of vegetables at fair
prices.
     This crop was worth about eight thousand dollars; but un-
fortunately an early rain sent a flood of water over              my field,
from a brook near by, and continued so long that one-half of my
potatoes were destroyed, before I could secure them, help being so
scarce.   However, what I did gather was a partial compensation
for my long struggle; besides, my success             was gratifying, and I
put that also down in my ledger as a further credit.             Thus ended
my farming venture of 1849.
                               (to   be continued).

                               GENTLE WORDS.

               Use gentle words, for who can tell
                 The blessings they impart?
               How oft they fall, as manna fell.
                     On some nigh-fainting heart!
               In lonely wilds, by light-winged birds.
                     Rare seeds have oft been sown;
                   And hope has sprung from gentle words,
                     Where only grief had grown.
                                                                  Selected.