Heber J. Grant

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Heber J. Grant Who Believes a Young Man Ought to Set Pegs, if They Are of the Right Kind, and Then Proceed to Reach Them

By John Henry Evans

— — Once there was a man so at least we are told whose sole occupation was holding down a soap hox on the platform of a country railway station and who said in answer to a question as to how he spent his days, "Oh, sometimes I set and think, and sometimes I just set." But the trouble is that no one gets anywhere who sits on soap boxes, whether his mental machinery (if he have any to speak of) runs or stays. He must exert himself to jump on the passing train in order to arrive at a destination. And these days he should have somewhere on his inside something like a forty horse-power battery to keep him going. i

Heber J. Grant is one of your forty horse-power men. He has always been such. More things have happened to him or — — rather, he has made more things come to pass than almost any man you could name. And he is altogether unique in this fact, that almost every happening with him is an incident with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Literary critics sometimes tell us that there are no ready-made plots in life. They do not know Heber J. Grant, who say this. With him occurrences naturally fall into events that arrive. And he has an abundance of them —financial, religious, inspirational. But all this is because of his singularly marked personality. He is the most determined of men. Once he undertakes a task, it is as good as performed. And he undertakes a great many varieties of things —as this narrative will show. President Grant was born in Salt Lake City sixty years ago. His father was Jedediah M. Grant and his mother Rachel Ivins. His father dying when Heber was in his infancy, he was brought up by his mother as an only and much-loved son is usually reared. The boys used to call him "Sissy" partly on account of his appearance, partly because he did housework for his mother. But this did not hamper the spirits of young Grant, for he had his own notion of things. Heber J. has had an extremely varied and busy career which is by no means ended.

From latest photo by H. H. Thomas, taken specially for the Era. PRESIDENT HEBER J. GRANT Born Salt Lake November 22, 1856; the first of Utah's sons to be City, called to the office of Apostle, and the thirty-third in number; chosen Pres- .dent of the Quorum of the Twelve, Nov. 23, 1916.

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He has been active in business. A born promoter, he has probably set going as many concerns as any other man in this part of the country. A dreamer by disposition, his mind deals always in large images and figures. A keenly practical man by nature and inheritance, he has the midas touch that makes everything work. If it were not tedious, I would enumerate the businesses with which he has been connected in various capacities; the bare enumeration of which would show that in this department of activity alone he has done more than an ordinary man's work. But he has also been active in religion. Indeed, for more than thitry-six years this activity has been his main line. When he was twenty-four years old he presided over the Tooele stake, and at twenty-six he became an apostle. He opened up the mission to Japan, he presided over the European mission for two years, and he has penetrated into nearly every nook and corner of the Church in the United States preaching the gospel in his clear, ringing tones. Surely, that good old bishop who called Heber J. Grant "the laziest boy in the ward," if he could know him now after thirty-six years of this double activity, would confess that he must have meant not lack of energy (there is no such thing as a lazy boy) but rather misdirected energy, looked at from the bishop's point of view. There never was a character less complex than Heber J. Grant's. It is utterly devoid of turns and twists, of hard knots, of devious ways and dark passages. His character is as straight as his tall, erect figure. His motives would never be questioned even by one who had not good motives himself. Men instinctively trust him because he can be trusted. Men rely on him — because he relies on himself and God. It is a beautiful thing to know where a man is, and you always know that of Heber J. Grant.

Two things primarily are characteristic of the new President of the Twelve. One is his perseverance, persistence, determination. And the other is the direction which this quality takes, which is away from self towards other people — a rare thing here below. Let me deal with each of these characteristics separately. Perseverance is the quality of staying with a thing till you get somewhere. The phrenologist calls it stick-to-itiveness. Have you ever kept up a thing against great odds? If so, you know the queer experience. Every once in a while you have a sinking of the heart, as people say. Now, if this sinking process becomes too great, you give up and go home. If your task is

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to climb a tree, you turn round and say you can't —which is true. It' it is to thread a difficult mental or commercial problem, you quit just before the light breaks. I doubt very much whether Heber J. Grant ever experienced this sensation of the sinking heart. Or if he ever has, it has not affected him to any appreciable degree. Three instances will serve to show how tenacious this man's mind is, once he has anything on it. When he was about fourteen, there were three baseball nines in the club to which he belonged. Heber was on the third nine, the scrubs, with lads under his age and size. One day one of the fellows, in an inspired moment, told him he could never learn to play. That casual remark, made in derision, pressed the button which turned on the electric power. Young Grant went home with this thought working in his active brain, "I'll show him; some day I'll play with the nine that wins the championship of the Territory!" A good many boys would merely have "wished" to be good players. Not so, Heber J. Grant. He also worked to be one. Shining shoes at 5c a shine, he got money to purchase a baseball, went out into the back yard, and lambasted his bishop's barn for hours at a time till his arm pained him. He went into the house and got his mother to bind wet cloths around it before he could go to sleep. (This was the barn of the bishop who called him "lazy!") He did more than this. He learned to catch by practicing with his friends, tiring out many of them at a time in the process. He finally became one of the players on the team that won the championship of the Territory. It took him some five years to do so, however. But what did that matter? The only wonder is that, not having the muscle to make a great ball player, he did not forthwith proceed to build up a ball player's muscle! He would have done so, most likely, if there had been such a thing known in those days as building muscles and if, moreover, baseball had been his life's ambition. — Many years after this when he was forty-three, in fact he took a notion that he would learn to sing. He had always loved music, and deplored the fact that in his preaching he was forced to quote or read favorite hymns instead of singing them, as George Goddard was wont to do. In this desire he was encouraged by those who knew less about the perversities of human nature than they did about music. Said one of these, "Whoever is persevering, has a voice, and is not tongue-tied, can learn to sing." And suiting the action to the word, the two thereupon undertook to show how easy a matter it is to carry a tune. In the word the thing was a mere trifle, but not in the

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— deed. Two hours it took two hours, full, heaping up, and run- — ning over with sweaty minutes for Heber J. Grant to "carry" the first two lines of "Oh, my Father," a hymn he had heard ever since his cradle days, and then only when his teacher led in the carrying! Some musical talent, this, to begin with, was it not?

But listen! Remember it was Heber J. Grant that was the learner. He practiced this hymn in season and out of season out of season mostly, his friends all thought. Singing was his task on first getting up in the morning, on going to bed at night, and between whiles whenever he could snatch a few brief moments from his daily round of work. Several thousand times he went over this hymn, learning it literally line upon line and bar upon bar, till he could be sure that he was not singing "God Moves in a Mysterious Way," which he undertook to learn about the same time. Today, as a result of this unheard of persistence, he can learn a new song in a comparatively short time! How Samuel Smiles would have gloated over an illustration of persistence like this! Here was a man, if ever there was one, who lacked utterly the singing ear, yet by keeping at the thing, long after every other human being would have given up in despair, he mastered all the mechanics of the art, till now it is not disagreeable to listen to his voice but actually pleasurable! Truly he has demonstrated the truth of his favorite saying, "That which we persist in doing becomes easy to do, not that the nature of the thing has changed, but that our own power to do has increased." During the panic of 1891 some three hundred and thirtyseven thousand dollars was sorely needed by certain interests here to tide affairs over the crisis. Heber J. Grant was chosen as their representative to go East and borrow the money. He was then thirty-five years old. President Woodruff assured him that — he would be successful that he would in fact get more money than he needed.' So with sublime faith in his own ability and in the word of the Prophet, he went on his errand financial. Money was exceedingly tight in those days! With the exception of Heber J. and a very few others, no one here believed that he would succeed in his mission and that therefore financial ruin stared these interests in the face. But he believed, and that was sufficient. So he went East. His difficulties were all but insurmountable. At an Omaha bank he asked for the loan of twelve thousand dollars and was refused, with the advice not to go farther east, for there was no money to be got, and that he would better pack his valise and return home. He answered that he would nevertheless get all the money that he needed and that, when he returned, he

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would tell this banker where and how he had gottten it. At the first bank in the Metropolis where he asked for a loan he was treated, at first, with scant courtesy by the vice president. But a personal plea to the committee brought him forty-eight thousand dollars. From other banks in New York City and Hartford he obtained his three hundred and thirty-seven thousand dollars. He was on the point of coming home, when he received word from Salt Lake City that forty-eight thousand dollars more was needed. And he got a promise of that. But on his arrival here he found out that a mistake had been made and that consequently this amount was not necessary. So the prediction of — the President of the Church was literally fulfilled he got more than he needed. These three incidents will suffice to show the extreme determination of Heber J. Grant. This quality, he thinks, can be cultivated in any one who wishes to cultivate it. To a large degree he himself has acquired it, although he must have possessed natively a great amount. His reading of the Book of Mormon when he was between thirteen and fourteen, especially the character of Nephi, impressed him greatly. Particularly was he struck with the statement made by this great Nephite prophet at the time he was asked of the Lord to do a difficult task: "I know that the Lord giveth no commandments unto the children of men, save he shall prepare a way for them that they may accomplish the thing which he commandeth them." To this simple passage Heber J. Grant attributes a great share of his persistence and faith in his aided power to bring things to pass. And to this quality is added a peculiarity. The merest suggestion that he cannot do any given thing is a direct means to his doing it, contrary to the usual practice respecting the power of suggestion.

Another phase of Heber J. Grant's character which I promised to speak about and which need not take us long, is the use to which he puts this large supply of persistence. Perseverance is a good quality or a bad one according as it is put to a good or a bad use. In this connection one remembers with a chill the perseverance of the man who followed his enemy from country to country till at last he ran the knife into him in an obscure South American village, where the pursued had sought refuge. Indeed, it is doubtful whether persistence ought to be used even mainly for one's own benefit, but chiefly for the advantage of others. At any rate, that is the use to which Heber J. Grant has put his great wealth of perseverance. On more than one occasion he