--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Anderson, Nephi collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 11 number: 6 published: 1908-04 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'Nephi Anderson, "Romance of a Missionary—VI. London," *Improvement Era* 11, no. 6 (April 1908): 420–430.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1106unse 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: improvementera1106unse start_page: 420 end_page: 430 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1908-04) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera1106unse publication_year: 1908 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 1908, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # Romance of a Missionary—VI. London ROMANCE OF A MISSIONARY. BY NEPHI ANDERSON, AUTHOR OF "ADDED UPON," "THE CASTLE BUILDER," ETC. VI. LONDON. Willard Dean made short work of his parting with the Sisters Fernley. He lingered longer with some of the other Saints — he felt safer with them. He disliked to part with his companion, Elder Donaldson, as he had learned to love him dearly; however, Elder Donaldson promised to visit him in London some time later. When Willard went to say goodby to Aunt Nancy and Nora, he was somewhat surprised to see how keenly they felt the parting. Why must he go? they enquired. Was he not doing well enough where he was? They would miss him very much. "You see," said the old lady, as she held his hand in her bony one and stroked it gently, "we haven't many real friends. We are here, Nora and I, struggling to live and help others a little. Your coming has been the only ray of sunshine which we have received for a long time — and now you are going, too." Willard had invited them a number of times to attend the meetings of the Saints, but so far they had not done so. When pressed for a reason he had been told that they had no clothes fit to go to church in; and he had tried to convince them that most of the Saints were poor people like themselves. His heart went out to them now, and he longed to help them. He knew that the greatest help he could give them was to get them interested in the gospel; and so he told them again of the other elders and how pleased the Saints would be to welcome them. When he arose to go, Nora walked out with him. ROMANCE OF A MISSIONARY. 421 "It is quite dark," she said. "May I walk along with you a short distance?" "Why, certainly; but why did you say that about it's being dark?" Never mind ; I know . ' ' She chose the darkest side of the streets as they walked . The young man surmised that she did this for his sake, and not for her own. "I want to tell you," she said, "that I have attended most of your street meetings lately, although you have not seen me. I have taken good care that you should not. I cannot keep away. Something draws me to what is said, and the manner the elders say it. I wanted to tell you this before you left." The girl's usually colorless cheeks seemed to glow, and her dark eyes beamed. "Go to our meetings," urged he. "I shall see that Elder Donaldson visits you. Talk to him, and let him talk to you. It will do you good." "I will try," she said. "Good night, I must not go farther." "Good night, and God bless you," replied Willard, as he shook her hand warmly. He went on, but she stood still. The "God bless you" rang in her ears as the sweet music of bells. She had never heard anything quite like those words before; and as she stood there looking after the retreating figure of the elder, her heart was touched, and she had an assurance that here at last was a man, a pure man, one that she could trust implicitly. And this man was going away. Well, such acquaintance had been given to her momentarily only — such had been her lot in life. The train which carried Willard Dean southward to London was an express, and stopped only at a number of the larger cities. The ride was a delightful one, through England's hills, fields and gardens. Willard was alone in the compartment most of the time. He tried to read, but did very little of that, as he kept looking out of the open window. When his thoughts were not on the flying landscape, they were back with the friends whom he had just left 422 IMPROVEMENT ERA. The reason for his leaving was uppermost in his mind, and he wondered if he was acting cowardly in thus running away from tsmptation. But his better sense told him that the only safe and wise thing to do in his case was to get away as far as possible from Stonedale. The train rolled on through alternating sunshine and showers. Towards the close of the afternoon Willard expected every town to be London, but the train sped out again across another stretch of country, then into a town and out into an open space again. The towns became larger and consequently the space between them smaller. They were now in the suburbs of the great city. At last there was no break in the houses; yet the train went on with undiminished speed, over bridges, under bridges, through streets, across streets, now underground, and now above the long rows of chimneys, with their chimney pots on top. The air was no longer clear. The sun was hidden in smoke. There was a continuous tooting of locomotives and rumble of trains coming and going. On they went. Were they not in London yet? Then the noises of the city, coming in such numbers and rapidity, soon blended into one continuous roar. Willard began to realize that he was in London at last. The train slowed up and stopped. "Tickets, please!" shouted the guards as the collection was made, and Willard knew that this was the last stop before the end of the journey . Once more the train moved, and in a few minutes the great busy station was reached. Willard Dean spent the remainder of the summer in London, and he learned to know some of the many phases of that "mighty mother city of our race, the great distributing heart of our traditional life." Willard had read of London, but had hardly expected to live in the city. But now the hours of loneliness on the farm which he had devoted to reading paid him back with interest. When he arrived in the city there was not one soul that he was aware of, which he knew, but everywhere he met names and places that appealed to him as old friends. The young man saw London in a good many moods, for the city has moods as well as the person who sees it. The first thing that came ROMANCE OF A MISSIONARY. 423 to Willard the day he arrived was: "This is London — London, the great and only London." He ought, perhaps, to have been overawed with the greatness of his environment, but he wasn't. His own feelings reminded him of his first reading of Shakespeare: In order to have the least semblance of enjoyment in the performance, he had to repeat to himself, "This is Shakespeare. I am reading Shakespeare, the great Shakespeare." In one of the first letters which Willard sent home from London, he described it thus: "London is a low, flat, ugly, groveling thing, spreading out over the green country on every hand, reaching out its grimy limbs over the beautiful earth." Again, a little later, he said: "London is not a city — it is a world by itself, or at least it has that appearance. I suppose that London contains people from every country on the globe. London hardly needs the light of heaven — I am told that it doesn't get much of it during the winter — for it seems an all- and self-sufficient thing in itself, going on without the aid of sun or moon or stars, wrapped up in its own busy-going affairs day and night." Willard was disappointed in the Thames. He saw it first near the Houses of Parliament, and found it to be a sluggish river **''" Si n wi ljU *~jjj^ i * l^^^n t2§t**»£ ^ ^^jzz&ffim «**• ^'^adA ' ' iLlk m** i M • Westminster Bridge and Houses of Parliament. 424 IMPROVEMENT ERA. with very little life on it save a few freight barges. However y lower down, he found very much traffic, while farther above, it becomes a pleasure stream for pleasure seekers. When he saw London bridge, he remembered how in childhood they had played a game which said that London bridge was falling down. As he stood on the bridge and watched the traffic, his mind wandered London Bridge. away from the busy scene to a more quiet one far away in the valleys of Utah. The last boy, he himself, had been caught by the falling "bridge" — the arms of two girls — and having decided that he liked oranges better than lemons was ranged on the "orange" side . Willard was the only boy on his side , and he had pulled for victory with all his strength . But it was of no use, as the other side had won, and Grace Wells had blamed him for the defeat. He remembered that day as he stood on the real London bridge. Willard did the usual work of tracting and holding street meetings. At first he felt his lonesomeness keenly. Millions of people were all around him, yet he was at times lonesome to a degree never before experienced. He had been in the desert surrounded by nothing but sand and scrub-brush. That had been The Bank of England Corner — "The busiest spot on earth." sublime solitude, and his heart had gone out to his God — he had not been lonesome. Here were vast hurrying crowds; here were life and motion, here were trade and business; while on the corner near the Bank of England more people passed him than would have done in any other spot on the earth, so he was really in the center of the world — and yet he was unutterably lonesome, because he had not one soul to whom he could speak and tell what was in his heart. It was not often that Willard took a day off from his work . When he was not tracting or visiting he was studying. He felt the need of more study as he came in contact with men of all classes ; and the young elder grew wonderfully in the power to grasp the truth and make practical application of it. The knowledge, somewhat general and abstract, which he had gained in his Sunday School and Mutual now came back to him and became specialized into something tangible that he could apply to the work in hand. The beauties of the gospel also opened up to him, and his testimony was strengthened accordingly. He liked the street work. Every evening when the weather permitted the elders were out on the streets. They met with much indifference and some opposition, but Willard had so far learned to control himself that he could go right on talking amid noise and interrup- 426 IMPROVEMENT ERA. tions. To him there was inspiration in the thought that each audience which they addressed was nearly if not entirely a new one, and that perchance among that audience there would be one soul seeking for and hungering after the truth. At every door which he visited with tracts he would say to himself, ''Perhaps in this house is some one waiting for the truth," and though he was disappointed time and time again, the thought became an eternal hope that led him on day by day. "And if it be so that ye shall labor all your days in crying repentance unto this people, and bring save it be one soul unto me, how great shall be your joy with him in the kingdom of my Father." One Saturday afternoon Willard took a holiday, and he spent most of it seeing London from the top of a bus, this being the most inexpensive way of seeing the city. The day was uncommonly warm, and the city people were out in summer attire. Willard liked to study people and faces, and on top of a bus is an ideal place for this. It had impressed Willard, as it has many others, that it is a strange thing for the biggest city in the world to still have horse cars as the chief method of street transportation . Willard usually got a seat well up in front near the driver to get away from the smokers, and to ask questions of the driver whom he usually found very accommodating and willing to talk. Willard had thought that he himself could drive a team very well, but when he had seen the London bus driver, he concluded he had yet something to learn . It was always one of the wonders of London — this constant stream of vehicles, dashing here and there, in and out of narrow streets, around corners and other vehicles, always seemingly just going to collide with something, but never doing it. The drivers went easily and safely through spaces with but a few inches to spare. The streets were ofttimes slippery, yet the horses were not allowed sharp-shod shoes. Willard mounted a bus in Kingsland Road, going south. He rode on past Shoreditch into Bishopsgate. Then past the busy Liverpool Street railway station, into the narrow Threadneedle Street, where the traffic became so congested that progress was slow. He got off at the bank corner and walked along Cheapsides to St. Pauls. The day was so fine that he did not wish to go inside the great cathedral, so he went on around to Paternoster ROMANCE OF A MISSIONARY. 427 Row, that extremely narrow street devoted to printers and book stalls. He lingered here for some time looking at the books, and thus by way of Amen Corner he passed out into Ludgate Hill and circus. In Fleet street he read the signs of the great London newspapers and paused long enough by the window of the Illustrated London News to look at the pictures in the latest edition . He remembered what a treasure a big bound volume of this paper had been to him as a child. At the end of Fleet Street are the Law Courts, and Willard turned aside to the Inner Temple and took a look at the grave of Oliver Goldsmith. Then he came out on to the busy Strand, and here he again took a cab to Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square. He rode along Pall Mall to Regent Street; crossed Piccadilly Circus to the Quadrant; then on up to the finest part of Regent Street where fashionable London does its shopping; then turned westward again to Oxford Street, and along to Hyde Park. /"VARBLf: ARCH "Willard got down from the bus at the Marble Arch." Willard got down from the bus at the Marble Arch and walked into the Park. A good many people were strolling about or lying on the grass, but he chose a path that led him into the middle of the great park. Here are nearly four- hundred acres of grass and trees lying in the heart of a great city As Willard walked away 428 IMPROVEMENT ERA. from the street, the noises of the city became less distinct, even as the houses were hidden by the distant trees. When in the middle of the park he could easily imagine himself in some far-away country district. As he lay on the grass, the city was nearly hidden from his view, and its noises now came to him like a low murmur, as if it might have been the rustle of waving fields of wheat or the babble of a brook over the stones. The sun shone in the sky above him, not with the fierce heat to which he was accustomed at home, but with a soft mildness that did not glare or burn. Everything around him was beautifully green, and the young man lay musing, letting the beauty of the scene distil upon his heart. He seemed to be quite alone. Very few people passed, and he was not disturbed in his musings. On one side of the park only could he see a few houses, hidden behind trees. In the dim, hazy distance of the opposite direction a skyline of house-tops could be seen as if over there were another and a more enchanted city, not a part of the black, noisy, commonplace town which he had just left. In the midst of millions he was once again alone . After all, how can one get away from the fact that each human soul, however closely connected it may be to other souls, is yet separate and distinct? Here were six millions of human beings collected into one small area of earth, crowding close together, on the ground, above the ground, under the ground. Each was dependent upon the other for means of sustaining life. And the whole "ant-bed'' was one intricate machine wherein each soul fitted in and played his part. And yet within each of these crawling specks of life is a world, though yet in embryo, — a world of thought, a world of feeling, a world of action . Each soul is a child of the great Father of all, partaking of the nature of that Parent who had given all existence. Each is a unit, a whole. Each had been given his agency to act and to be acted upon. What, then, thought Willard. as his mind went out on these things, what force can move these many people out of the dead level of thought and action to something higher? What power could be given them by which they could get out from the sin and misery with which they are carrying on an unequal struggle? The answer came to Willard that afternoon in rather an incomplete form; but it set up a train of thoughts which was some- ROMANCE OF A MISSIONARY. 429 what new to him, and yet which appealed to him forcibly. Of course, the first answer to such a question would be : The gospel of Jesus Christ, being the power of God unto salvation, is the greatest force known to uplift and to save, and yet, away down somewhere among the foundation stones of this gospel lies individuality. "I am an eternal being," said Willard to himself. "Within me are latent powers, which if developed, will give me the strength needed to go on in the scale of progress. Everything lies, potentially' within me, even now. As an individual, no other person in all creation is like me — I am like no one else. That essential ego which I call T is of a divine nature, therefore good. (The fact that I am here in my second estate proves that thus far I have been loyal to my divine nature.) True progress, therefore, lies in "He crossed the Serpentine by the bridge." developing the dormant possibilities of ones self. I must not think that anyone else can either help me or hinder me very much when it comes to working out a salvation. I must become my true and heaven-appointed self. I am in the lineage of the Gods, and therefore, of pure stock. If I get into bad ways or engraft into myself bad habits, I become deformed; and that deformity is in proportion to the distance which I wander from the straight path, or sink into the depths of sin. My only safety, then, is in always 430 IMPROVEMENT ERA. doing the right, and thus being true to myself "- lines came to him: -and Shakespeare's "To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man. ' ' Willard could not get much further. Beyond the statement of a few facts and conclusions he could not go; but he tried to keep within his grasp some of the impressions which had come to him. It seemed to him that the Lord had taken him to the borderland of a great light, and had given him a glimpse of the glories within. The afternoon was passing. Willard walked on through the park, crossed the Serpentine by the bridge, and came to Rotten Rotten Row— Fashionable London's driveway. Row. Fashionable London had had their driving and riding, and had gone home. A few automobiles sped over the roadway, and a number of carriages were leisurely rolling along the Row. From Hyde Park Corner he walked through Green Park past Buckingham Palace and into James Park. Here he paused to look at the flowers and the swans on the lake, then made his way to Charing Cross where he took a bus for home. [to be continued.]