Training Our Future Citizens
Improvement Era, vol. 24, no. 9, July 1921, p. 783
Young Men's Mutual Improvement Associations
GLIMPSES OF PIONEER LIFE 783
The simple record of this mission, occupying fifty-five pages, should be an inspiration to any boy in Zion looking forward himself to this kind of service in the Lord's vineyard. It will tell him of hardships and trials endured stoically and overcome; of faith tested to the quick and vindicated of experiences so full ;
of the tang of life that no fiction can equal them for vividness; of dangers by sea and land, which only the daily watch care of a guardian angel could protect and rescue him from; and, through it all, the development of a fine physical manhood, and the rebirth and unfoldment of that greater spiritual man within. Elder Young filled a subsequent mission to the Sandwich Islands, also a mission to Great Britain; and while much of the narrative of these missions is of a character to be enjoyed mainly by those who have had similar experiences, it breaks out every little while in story, anecdote, description, and poem, on topics which only the missionary, with an eye to the unique, the pic- turesque, and the beautiful, would see or take time to record. During his long years in Zion, Elder Young's life was spent on the firing line of the frontier, and his book is full of the graphic happenings of field and flood. Savage Indians, deputy marshals, and of traveling, camping reunions, and business ventures. There is not a dull line in the book. Throughout its pages we have for a companion a man of keen insight, shrewd initiative, dauntless courage, and the tender sensibilities of a woman. That he is still hale and hearty bespeaks wonders for the frail boy that the prophet blessed, far back in Nauvoo. It is Elder Young's delight to travel throughout the stakes of Zion and impart the ripe wisdom and genial optimism which are the fruits of his life, and the Bishop who fails to get him for an evening with his ward is missing a privileged treat. What is still more to the point, when stories like those he has to tell, and which he tells with such instinlctive skill nay, — when a life of service such as his has been, shall cease to thrill the descendants of the Pioneers, that day will mark a decadence in our ideals; we shall have begun to lose the savor of the salt which represents the vitality of "Mormonism" in its mission for the regeneration of the world. Provo, Utah
Training Our Future Citizens
"Children trained to extend justice, kindness and mercy to animals just, kind and considerate toward each other. Character become more will result in their training along these lines when the children are young, being better men and women, with broader sympathies, more humane, law-abiding, and in every respect more valuable citizens."