---
title: Improvement Era
description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930.
authors:
  - Porter, Elizabeth Cannon
collections:
  - periodicals
tags:
  - magazine
  - improvement-era
periodical: Improvement Era
volume: 22
number: 10
published: 1919-08
publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations
publisher_place: Salt Lake City
language: en
type: magazine
reference: 'Porter, Elizabeth Cannon, "The Bride," *Improvement Era* 22, no. 10 (August 1919): 878–879.'
source:
  url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera22010unse
  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: improvementera22010unse
start_page: 878
end_page: 879
rights:
  status: public-domain
  basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1919-08)
  source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera22010unse
  publication_year: 1919
  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 1919, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright.
---

# The Bride

<!-- page:878 -->

880                        IMPROVEMENT ERA

colored gown, arose to greet them, and he again perceived how
lame she was.
    She asked them many questions about their religion, and
their very simplicity impressed her.         They came many times
after that,   and she served them tea.      They declined the drink,
but ate the little cakes. They talked about many principles of
the gospel, but always the conversation veered round to the subject of eternal marriage.
      In Boston, where they read the Bible for its "fine Semitic
flavor," one may believe in Buddhism, pantheism, or the transmigration of souls.   It was only considered somewhat queer that
Miriam Manners should have taken up with that strange western
religion "Mormonism."
     So, one day she was baptized in her own marble swimming
pool.   After that she was a regular attendant at the Latterday Saints services. With her prestige and influence she was
able to help the laboring missionaries meet people that they
did not ordinarily gain access to. Then she tried to convert her
father. She told him how splendid it would be to have his four
fine sons sealed to him in the hereafter. The old banker was engrossed in the money-getting of this world, but he encouragd his
daughter. He was glad to have her interested in anything.
     When, after years of experience that had tested as well as
increased her faith, she expressed a desire to go to the temple, in
Salt Lake City, to be sealed to her dead husband, her father
gladly acquiesced, and added that a trip to the far west would do
her good.
     So Miriam went up to the House of the Lord, in the tops of
the mountains, and when she donned her veil, she was more
radiant than on that first bridal morn.

                             A Prayer
Father in heaven,                 Send   me a   greeting
  Draw near to me;                  Tempered with cheer;
Clear up my vision,               While a blind mortal
  Help me to see                    I   linger here,
Thy mercy and truth,              Guard me from danger,
 While now I bend my knee.          And keep thou me from fear.

Turn me from evil,                Give to  me wisdom
 With charity's measure;            To light my way;
Of the little good                Let not the dull mists
 I've tried to treasure,            Darken my day;
Keep thou my heart                While the tares reaping,
  From dangerous pleasure.          Allow thou me to stay.
Ogden, Utah                                            O. M. Sanderson.

<!-- page:879 -->

Rubber from Rabbit Brush
By J. Cecil Alter, Meteorologist,   U. S. Department Agriculture,   W eatiier
                                Bureau

     "What a joy it was to me," remarked the pioneer housewife, "when, in the early days, my mother dyed a faded Sunday
 frock with a delicate but beautiful
yellow coloring matter which she had
extracted from rabbit brush blossoms; it was the most gaily colored
dress I had owned, and I was a happy
girl, indeed."
     "Yes," added the husband, who
had carefully selected his farmstead
so as to contain as little rabbit brush
land as possible, "I've noticed that
the cattle will browse it in winter,
too, but we usually considered it good
for nothing, like the land it grows on
—  too much wet and alkali in the subsoil where it grows. It is good rabbit
hunting ground when the snow is
deep, though, and that's all we've
used it for since we came here in the
80's."
        Thus did the "Mormon" ranchfolks, accommodating the traveler for
 the night, evince an interest in the
 investigating botanist, who, in the lat-
 ter days of the war, was quietly map-
 ping and sampling the rabbit brush PROF. MARCUS E. JONES
 areas of the state for government in-    Of Salt Lake City, Utah,
 formation.                                 botanist, securing typical
                                            specimens of rabbit brush
      "You're takin' home some souve-
                                            for laboratory tests as to
nirs, are you?" a village loafer had        rubber contents. The finer
facetiously inquired, as the botanist       roots and stems are not
came into town, his Ford bristling          utilized. Specimen taken
                                            in Circle   Valley, Piute
with well-tagged specimens of rabbit
                                            county, Utah,
brush.
     "Better be careful about takin' too much of that stuff; we've
only got about two million acres of it," finished the joker, quite
satisfactorilv to himself.
