From the Q&A-filled pages of the Juvenile Instructor, 1898:

Q. The question is frequently asked, “What will we do with our girls?” this being prompted by the number of young ladies who are growing to womanhood without much prospect of marriage.

A. This is a most serious question for Latter-day Saints. Probably no people on the earth place a higher value on the married relation than they do. …

A great many young men entertain wrong ideas concerning marriage. They appear to be reluctant to take to themselves wives, because they cannot furnish them with such homes as they think they ought to have, or as many of the girls are accustom4ed to. They hesitate, therefore, about proposing marriage. And even when they are engaged to some young lady of their choice, they delay marriage, hoping that they will be able after a while to furnish their brides with better homes. I know of some cases of this kind.

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When Apostle Ezra Taft Benson toured Europe in 1946, reestablishing contact with the Saints and establishing relief channels, he visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp.

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The last year of the Juvenile Instructor to feature black-and-white covers, 1914′s images portray scenes of early 20th century child-life, no doubt purchased from an art supply house. No artist’s or distributor’s name appears on the covers or in the magazine, so far as I could determine.

Each painting has a title printed in small type at the bottom; if you can’t make out those titles, let me know and I’ll add them to the post.

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Evelyn Nessie Eleanor was born in London in 1881; married John William Rudd in 1904; and died in Skelton, Yorkshire in 1937. She served as a local missionary at the end of World War I. Although many of their children emigrated to the United States, Brother and Sister Rudd stayed at home in Yorkshire strengthening the Church there. She recorded her  testimony and the account of her missionary experiences in 1919:

I desire to give my testimony to the truth of the gospel. For I know that ours is the same gospel that our Lord preached, and that the Mormon Church is the Church of Christ, restored in these latter days. The persecutions the saints have suffered in former times bear witness to the truth, as do also the untrue statements that appear from time to time in trashy books and other publications. They prove that the adversary is afraid because he knows that the true and everlasting gospel is on earth again.

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Frederick Lamb was born late in 1874 in Birmingham, England. He and his wife Annie Smith joined the Church in 1909; their family – eventually reaching 10 children – became members of the Sparkbrook Branch in the Birmingham Conference.

Fred was called into the service of king and country with the outbreak of World War I and worked through his late 30s and early 40s in support of the British Navy. It was a much rougher life, among much rougher men, than he had been used to, but he tried to live his religion. He liked the men he worked with, despite their roughness – he wrote to his wife, “How little they know that I pray for them daily! God bless them!”

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Teachings for Our Times

Henry B. Eyring, “Be Ready”
Jeffrey R. Holland, “Safety for the Soul”

Purpose

To help sisters recognize that we prepared in the past for our present lives of service as daughters of God, and that as we develop our capacity in life we prepare for a glorious future in the eternities.

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Lesson 14: “Ye Shall Be a Peculiar Treasure Unto Me”

Exodus 12-20; 32-34
Galatians 3:24
Mosiah 13:29

Purpose

To encourage class members to partake of the Lord’s spiritual water and bread, sustain his chosen leaders, and obey his commandments so he can make of them a “holy nation.”

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Can’t You Come In?

Dentist: “You don’t need to open your mouth so wide. I’m going to stand outside.”

In the Barber Shop

Barber: “Will you have anything on your face after I’ve finished shaving you, sir?”

Patron: “It doesn’t seem likely.”

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(See here for background)

From 1957 –

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See here for background

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And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God’s host: and he called the name of that place Mahanaim. And Jacob sent messengers before him to Esau his brother unto the land of Seir, the country of Edom. And he commanded them, saying, Thus shall ye speak unto my lord Esau; Thy servant Jacob saith thus, I have sojourned with Laban, and stayed there until now: And I have oxen, and asses, flocks, and menservants, and womenservants: and I have sent to tell my lord, that I may find grace in thy sight.

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Just before his death in 1877, Brigham Young provided for the establishment of a “college” (closer in spirit to the church’s stake academy system than to a modern college) in Logan, Utah. Brigham Young College existed in one form or another until 1926, serving some 40,000 students as high school, junior college, or normal (teacher training) college. Some of its graduates were future apostles John A. Widtsoe, Melvin J. Ballard, Hugh B. Brown, Marriner S. Eccles, Richard R. Lyman, and Albert E. Bowen.

Brigham Young College published a little booklet of its Cheers and Songs in 1921. The booklet includes “The Star Spangled Banner” and “America,” and a “College Hymn” expressing such fervent devotion as we seldom see even in our hymn book:

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Debate – along with drama, music, speech, and dance – was a mainstay of the MIA program during much of the 20th century. In today’s atmosphere of political and social incivility extending even into the ranks of the church, it seems a little unreal that in ward after ward, year after year, with apparently few exceptions (too few to draw public censure from the General Boards), Latter-day Saints were expected to have honest but friendly differences of political opinion. Not only that, but they were actually encouraged to discuss those differences courteously and intelligently, and not to allow their political differences to carry over into daily life. What would that be like?

Below are the debate rules and the choice of topics to be debated by the MIAs in January, 1923, after a period of preparation and study:

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The girls of the Y.L.M.I.A. turn once again to Catherine Hurst for answers to all their homework questions in life:

—oooOooo—

Who was the founder of the Red Cross Society? – M.H.W.

The “Red Cross Society” is an international organization for the protection and care of the sick and wounded in war and the care of sufferers from other large calamities. The organization is the result of an international treaty entered into by most of the leading nations, at a convention held in Geneva, Switzerland, in August, 1864. This treaty sustains the neutrality of Red Cross Societies in all countries, and on all waters covered by the compact, and insures to it the protection of all conflicting forces in time of war. It cares for victims of flood, pestilence, famine and fire, as well as victims of war. (2) If children earn money it is right for them to pay tithing.

—oooOooo—

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What do you do with a historical document – or a family history anecdote – that you really, really, really want to believe, but for which you can find no confirmation? Any historian wants to find something new, but no reputable historian wants to publish something extraordinary without sufficient verification.

Following the 1882 death of Victor Jouanneault, one of the Salt Lake newspapers printed this obituary, republished from a respectable midwestern newspaper:

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This lesson is built entirely around Balaam, a man whose story we have seldom invoked in earlier Sunday School curricula. A narrative account of Balaam – complete with a subtitle that is identical to the title of the lesson in our current manual – was told for children in 1947.

Balaam, the Covetous Priest
“I cannot go beyond the word of the Lord, my God”

To the Teacher:

Quiet listening does not assure learning. Activity is the key.

Pre-study Questions:

1. How much longer did the Israelites wander in the wilderness?
2. What happened to the older Israelites?
3. Did the Lord remain with Israel?

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Today’s Sunday School lesson, as taught in our ward:

Lesson 13: Bondage, Passover, and Exodus

Exodus 1-3; 5-6; 11-14
Matthew 26: 19, 26-28

Purpose

To encourage class members to (1) trust the Lord to fulfill his promises, (2) increase their appreciation for the Savior’s atoning sacrifice, and (3) make the sacrament more meaningful in their lives.

LESSON DEVELOPMENT

Attention Activity

[Before class, write “Remember” on white board.]

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The ZBs and ZGs — Zion’s Boys and Zion’s Girls — of 1929 had a play day when they built and flew model airplanes. I love the antique flavor of the shapes in this familiar modern toy. Feel like a family air show now that spring is here?

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Quarrelsome

“But why did you leave your last place?” the lady asked the would-be cook.

“To tell the truth, mum, I just couldn’t stand the way the master an’ the missus used to quarrel, mum.”

“Dear me! Do you mean to say that they actually used to quarrel?”

“Yis, mum, all the time. When it wasn’t me an’ him, it was me an’ her.”

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This may be the earliest document yet published at Keepa – an 1838 newspaper article probably based on, or even clipped verbatim from, an American newspaper. I’m amazed at the accurate detail mixed with the wackiest of tall tales current in the U.S. We are presented as the most gullible of fools, yet decent overall. Hmmm.

The Operative (London, England)
11 November 1838

Fanaticism in America.

A fanatical sect of people, numbering about 2,000, with 1000 fighting men, and calling themselves “Mormons,” have settled in a county of Missouri, where they are giving so much trouble to their neighbours, that the militia has been called out to keep them in order, or expel them from the state. A conflict has already taken place, in which several lives were lost on both sides.

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See here for background

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And it came to pass, that when Isaac was old, and his eyes were dim, so that he could not see, he called Esau his eldest son, and said unto him, My son: and he said unto him, Behold, here am I. And he said, Behold now, I am old, I know not the day of my death: Now therefore take, I pray thee, thy weapons, thy quiver and thy bow, and go out to the field, and take me some venison; and make me savoury meat, such as I love, and bring it to me, that I may eat; that my soul may bless thee before I die. And Rebekah heard when Isaac spake to Esau his son. And Esau went to the field to hunt for venison, and to bring it.

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VIII. Proper Street Deportment
X. Social Observances in Calling, at Weddings, and Funerals (to be linked when posted)

IX. Shopping.

The women do the shopping of the world. Men buy and sell in great quantities and conduct the wholesale business and traffic of every country, but it is the women who do practically all the buying of food, of clothing and of house furnishings. Women regulate prices in necessary commodities, by their whims and fashions, and indirectly control the market, and in the same indirect way, women regulate the customs and habits of shop-keepers and shop employees, while their own characters are more or less moulded and modified by the reacting influences. It is, therefore, not unprofitable to observe somewhat closely the ethics of shopping, as they are governed and controlled by as immutable laws as any other social force.

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My father’s blood type was A-neg. That is certainly not rare, but it is uncommon enough that the blood bank where Dad donated regularly in the early 1960s asked him not to donate. Rather, they said, they preferred that he be on call to give blood only when needed. I don’t fully understand the reason for that; maybe some patients needed fresh rather than stored blood, or potentially needed more than the local bank was apt to have in storage. I do dimly remember times when Dad was called from work or home to rush to the hospital. Once, he said, there was no time to draw his blood in one room and carry it to an operating room. They put Dad on a gurney in the operating room and hooked him up with tubes to a patient on a gurney next to him. I loved that story –- my dad was a hero. He saved lives!

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Adele Cannon Howells (1886-1951), the author of this 1913 article on “delight in domestic labor,” certainly swept her share of floors and washed her share of dishes in her early life. Yet even by the date of this article she had so far escaped a steady diet of laundry and dusting to study at the Latter-day Saints University in Salt Lake City and had begun teaching at the University of Utah. Later, as her husband’s law practice matured, she traveled with him world-wide, living in Europe for a time before establishing a more or less permanent base in southern California. Adele returned to Salt Lake City when she was widowed in 1939. For the rest of her life, she served on the General Board of the Primary, serving as General President from 1943 to the date of her death. Under her leadership, the Primary built its  Children’s Hospital; she also commissioned Arnold Friberg to paint the familiar Book of Mormon illustrations that appeared first in the Children’s Friend and which for decades have been published in paperback editions of the Book of Mormon. She was the editor of the Children’s Friend who corresponded with Arnold Ga—n, the young German boy who found a stray copy of the magazine in the German forest.

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Another General Conference has just passed, which means it’s time to play Conference Wordles. I’ve run talks and other Conference materials from the past week through wordle.net and come up with the word clouds below. As you know, words that were used most often in a talk appear in large type, while words that appeared less often are in smaller letters.

Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to identify the talk and the speaker (or other appropriate identification) for the word clouds. Use the talk files here for titles or any other help you need.

One solution per Keepa’ninny, though — if some puzzles are harder than others and go unsolved for too long, I’ll  invite you to solve a second or third, or to give a clue for others to use. Here goes:

[UPDATE: All puzzles have now been solved, with a complete solution in comment #52. You can still play on your own, of course, without reading the comments. Thanks for the fun, y'all!]

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The current manuals crowds much of the history of Israel’s early years of wilderness wandering – including the Ten Commandments and the rest of the Law given to Moses – into a single lesson. The Sunday School manual of 1965, while still covering theological and historical ground very rapidly, allows two weeks for the same discussion. As at present, the 1965 lessons emphasize becoming a “holy nation” before God by obeying his commandments, sustaining his appointed leaders, and exercising faith.

Moses: Faith Is Confidence and Must Be Developed

Concept

People may know that there is a God, and know that He has helped them and can help them, but still lack faith that He will; for faith is confidence, and is superior to knowledge as a motivating force. The lack of faith may leave a formerly knowledgeable people rebelliously inert.

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Artwork by Nelson White; text by unknown author

previous issue

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From the magazines of 1931 — some of the jokes that wouldn’t make it into a church magazine today will take your breath away!

Diplomatic

Cad: “Did Brother Brown give the bride away?”

Caddy: “”No, sir; he’s going to let the groom find out for himself.”

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(See here for background)

From 1960 –

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This change-of-address card from the January 1965 Children’s Friend is posted for no reason other than it made me smile.

Have a happy.

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These questions appeared in the pages of the Improvement Era; when those answering the questions were named, those names are indicated in the answers here.

Q. A short time ago, while attending a stake conference, I was requested to state, through the Era, my position on the question of Sunday baseball. The brother making the request said that he had been informed that I had publicly advocated the playing of baseball on Sunday.

A. I am opposed to Sunday baseball, and have been so from my boyhood days. When a young man, I was passionately fond of the game, but today am happy in contemplating the fact that, much as I loved to play it, I never played a game on Sunday. I am grateful to know that I also persuaded more than one young man from playing on Sundays.

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Something light for your Wednesday afternoon: a bit o’ Primary history, vintage 1934:

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