The Pioneers

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Improvement Era Vol. XIX JUNE, 1916 No. 8

The Pioneers*

BY C. C. GOODWIN

It is good to see the Saints bring their children in to confer- ence. We wonder if many of them stop to tell their children the beautiful story of the evolution that the full history pictures, since the day that the first weary company came down the eastern mountains and halted here. That was Salt Lake's first moving picture; there has been none like it since. Contemplating it, the temple, the hotels, thea- tres, churches, hospitals, great business houses and stately homes

the temples to Religion, to Learning, to Industry, to Justice and Mercy all vanish away; the roar of business becomes still; the silence which the desert broods comes back gardens vanish, the ;

flowers all fade ; there is nothing as now seen save the surround- ing mountains ; the lake shimmering in the distance, the sun shin- ing down from above, and the desolation that wrapped all this region 'round like a burial robe. Even the branches on the few stunted trees hung drooping like funeral plumes, while the sough of the breeze coming down from the hills or up from the lake was as mournful as is the requiem chanted on the shores of the Styx. The way a state is carved out of a wilderness and rounded into form is always an interesting theme. The way the first

*Reprinted from Goodzvin's Weekly, April 8, 1916.

672 IMPROVEMENT ERA stakes of civilization were driven in Utah was dramatic enough to be set to words for the stage. In their penury and distress, the first act of the Utah pioneers was to sink upon the earth ; not in prayer for help, not in lamentation and despair, but in a glad Praise Service and in thanks to the Power that had led them through the waste and over the transfixed billions of the ever- lasting hills to a place of rest. Then their work began. They were not dreaming of for- tunes. The struggle before them was to live and that struggle con- tinued almost without abatement to the end. Often only the barest necessities were vouchsafed ;few comforts, no luxuries. In that rough friction their youth was worn away; the men sur- rendered their ambitions, the women folded fond dreams and a thousand innocent longings in their hearts and drew the silence of self-sacrifice and self-abnegation over them forever. But then a miracle commenced. The desert began to transfer the wrinkles and the sadness from its sombre face to theirs, while in turn it began to absorb the splendor of their youth, and to cause it to be reflected in flowers and fruits and golden grain and vines in which the birds made their nests and filled all the soft air with their songs. Later still, as though touched with pity, the irresponsive mountains began to swing back their adamantine doors revealing the treasures within, where they had remained secreted, waiting until the time should be ripe for the coming of progress and en- lightenment. The over-wearied eyes of those Pioneers have mostly all closed their hands, gnarled by labor, are nearly all folded, but ;

the miracle is still being performed. More and more fields are annually rescued from the desert; more and more flowers are blooming; more and more birds are singing; wider and wider fields grow golden under the harvest sun, recalling the old legend, that artist angels, in the long ago, came here from Summerland and with divine pencils, dipped in the dyes where light is brewed, painted these mountains, with their dawns and sunsets that turn them to gold, and left it all as a frame for a city beautiful which man was to build we may believe that the building of that city ;

has been begun and is progressing toward perfection. This is the story that should be told the children when they are brought into conference, and then they should be told to listen and note if they cannot still hear the echoes of that first Praise Service, with which the fathers dedicated this soil to the enlightenment which comes through devotion to duty, through the omnipotence of patient labor, and through faith in God.