---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - David B. Anderson
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 7
number: 9
published: 1904-07
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'David B. Anderson, "An Experience," *Improvement Era* 7, no. 9 (July 1904): 673.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0709unse
  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: improvementera0709unse
start_page: 673
end_page: 673
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1904-07)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera0709unse
  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.
---

# An Experience

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—

                       AN EXPERIENCE.
  BY DAVID B. ANDERSON, STUDENT IN THE UNIVERSITY OF UTAH.

     [Every person who knew the fun-loving and jolly nature of the late
Hon. Aaron F. Farr, a pioneer of the original one hundred and forty-three,
of 1847, and for a time judge of Weber County, a man of sterling char-
acter and sunny disposition, will readily believe the following amusing
anecdote of him, related in an English composition exercise by this young
student.   Editors.]

     A good many years ago the late Judge Aaron F. Farr, of
Ogden, had a flock of sheep, of which he was justly proud and
careful. He used to send them to a pasture several miles distant,
every morning, in charge of two or three of his sons.
     One evening, several of the      old bucks came      home covered
with mud.      When he asked his sons how it happened, they replied
that the sheep must have fallen into the spring.
     There being a muddy spring in the pasture, he concluded that
the bucks had been fighting     among    themselves, and had pushed
each other in.    But after that, they frequently came home in the
same condition, and his sons would never explain the cause, so he
determined to learn for himself.
     He followed the boys to the pasture, one morning, and hid in
some willows, near the spring.       Soon the boys brought the sheep
to a large tree, they themselves coming to the spring.
    One of the boys got down on his hands and knees, at the
edge of the water and morass, and jumped around. An old buck
saw him, and taking his actions as a challenge-signal, madly rushed
at him.   But as soon as the sheep got dangerously near, the boy
quickly sprang aside, letting the buck turn sommersaults into the
mud and water.