From the Relief Society Magazine, April 1950 –

The Thickness of Water

By Nellie Iverson Cox

Gretchen hastily jerked her scorched finger away from its contact with the hot stove lid. “Ouch!” she ejaculated, surveying her finger ruefully. “And some people think I should settle down permanently to this business of living on a farm!” Gingerly, she began ladling the smooth batter onto the smoking griddle, but turned at the sound of pattering footsteps. Six-year-old Ronnie, barefoot, and pajama-clad, came through the door leading to the bedrooms.

“Oh, Mommy, I don’t want to wear these short trousers; I want overalls like Kenny wears!” His boyish face, with its recently acquired tan, wrinkled up at her imploringly as he held the knee-length suit to her view. when she did not answer, he came nearer and caught hold of her dress insistently. “Mama, you’re not going back to the city; I hate it. I hate Olga and Mrs. Watts at the Day Nursery ‘n everything. I want to live here with Kenny ‘n Nora ‘n Thayne.”

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I attended a meeting recently of a committee considering  a community history of one of the towns near Salt Lake City. One member of the committee, a Latter-day Saint woman, asked at one point, “Would you include church history?” Without knowing that this woman had previously taken a stand against the inclusion of Mormon history – “the non-Mormons won’t want to read that” – I replied that of course we would need to include that aspect of the town’s history. I cited the example of a man significant to the entire Church who had lived in that community, and said that no local history could be adequate if that, and other pieces of important local religious history were omitted.

“But of course,” I said, “there are ways, and there are other ways, of telling the stories.” I mentioned the experience I had gained writing for the Salt Lake Tribune, whose audience (at least as represented by its online commenters) was not especially welcoming of Mormon history. I can – and do – tell stories of Mormons there, but I don’t preach, and I don’t speak of spiritual matters as if everyone shared the same view, and I tell stories of other religious groups at least as often as I tell a Mormon one. We could and should do the same thing in the community history: We should tell about the LDS church leader without writing as though every reader accepted him as a prophet, seer, and revelator; we should tell stories about other Latter-day Saint experiences in the community; and we should tell stories about other religious people and organizations and what they had contributed to the town.

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The Kiss

By Theodore E. Curtis

A shy little miss, mighty easy to kiss,
Met Jim at the foot of the mountain;
But I scorn to advance what I saw at a glance,
Through the silvery spray of the fountain!
But I saw that she saw that he saw that I saw,
And he saw that she saw that I saw it;
So I know that she knows that he knows that I know,
And he knows that she knows that I know it.

(1918)

See here for overview.

VI.

Do You Have Growing Pains?

People seldom have the muscular aches and pains nowadays that used to be known as growing pains. It is claimed by some that they were caused by nutritional deficiencies and not by rapid growth at all. Ever since you took your first tumbles learning to walk, however, you have been having another type of “growing pains,” and no one yet has discovered the “vitamin” guaranteed to prevent them.

During each period of your life you have had to do a great deal of growing to be ready for the responsibilities and privileges of the next stage. During infancy you had to learn to walk, to talk, to feed yourself, put your clothes on, take care of some of your own needs, and adjust to the routines and requirements of society. During childhood, you had to master the other arts of communication, reading and writing. Your own little world of home and neighborhood expanded rapidly as you began to learn some things about the entire earth and its inhabitants. You also got a good start in learning how to satisfy your own requirements and desires and at the same time get along without too much interference and friction with others.

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From the Relief Society Magazine, April 1936 –

The Mother of Nancy

By Vesta P. Crawford

Margaret Dale, matron of the Children’s Aid Society, had forgotten everything but the May morning. She stood at the south window looking out on the sloping lawn to a shining spot where pink and yellow tulips bordered the flagstone walk. The tulips were fresh and new budded, fluted, and dusted with dew.

The woman caught her breath suddenly. “Chalice cups,” she whispered, “perhaps the Holy Grail was like a tulip cup.”

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Deseret Book has now made the eBook version (DB’s own platform; not Kindle) of Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Vol. 1 available for download at $19.22.

The bonus content is also available for download as a .pdf file, free (for the time being; I don’t know if that is to be a permanent thing). The site seems to be overwhelmed at the moment — I had to try several times before connecting, although once I did connect it downloaded rapidly.

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BHodges has a great post at BCC, Thinking about Mormonism and “critical thinking”, opening with a survey of the current crop of “highly caricatured pieces of polemic” about Mormonism. Nate Oman addresses the ongoing parade of hysterical claims that “Romney is the tool of Mormon theocracy” in today’s New York Daily News. I’m grateful to BHodges and Nate Oman and the many others who are willing to tackle these pieces head-on; I don’t have the stomach for it – their claims are so ridiculous and so at variance from the church and people I know that I can seldom get beyond the point of rolling my eyes, and wondering why any news organization thinks these caricatures are newsworthy, much less truthful.

People have been warning each other about us from our earliest days, in the same over-the-top, breathless panic. Elders on the first mission to England, for instance, described the fury of several preachers in 1841:

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Lien on the Land

By Margery S. Stewart

We have not paid enough for this land
And we have forgotten the price our fathers
Gave. We are renters of their holdings,
Disdaining the soil that holds their sweat
And dreams and their blood. A man cannot buy
A country with silver, nor can he keep it
With grudging gold. The hills, from sea to sea,
Stripped of their tall trees, the plains
Robbed to their dust, they hold the imprint
Still of men who loved them. The winds
From Valley Forge blow on the self-seekers
Who would betray us, the careless who have lost
Their shields, on the rusted swords of the
Fearful. High above the nations we stand,
Garlanded with plenty. Beautiful earth!
Fairest under heaven, let us be aware
Of your richness, of your free skies,
And your rivers belonging to us all, of
Your wild lost places, your turbulent streets.
We have not paid enough in love, nor vision,
We have forgotten our children’s children.

(1950)

I haven’t searched the pages of this year’s Teachings of the Presidents manual, but I feel reasonably secure in supposing this story isn’t one that made it into that book:

George Albert Smith’s childhood home was one of financial struggle, in comparison to the homes of his neighbors and those we might consider his social equals. Their homes had lawns; his did not. Their homes had organs; his did not. “But I did have a Jew’s harp,” he recalled, “a harmonica, banjo and a guitar, and I learned to play them.”

He also learned to sing … not necessarily the finest classical tunes, or the romantic hits of the day, but comedy songs, with words that suited his somewhat comedic appearance. He was, after all, very tall, and very thin, with long arms and legs, which he could work to his comedic advantage by exaggerating their disjointed, floppy, gangliness. He also could work his face into a living caricature of himself. His mouth, especially, could be stretched and opened to an exaggerated distance.

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We’ll take a break from the serials this week with some short fiction from our cultural past. First up: Which will win out? Edna’s understandable need for the barest bit of security in life, or her ability to cope with – or even respect – her husband with his generous nature but improvident habits?

From the Relief Society Magazine, March 1938 –

Edna’s Husband

by Mary Ek Knowles

Edna Arnold sat at the big kitchen table, and counted the bills again. “Ten … twenty … thirty … forty … fifty-five … sixty-five … seventy-five … ninety-five … one hundred!” No matter how many times she counted the bills the answer was always the same. She wrinkled her pretty forehead and her blue eyes were troubled. It seemed to her that there should be more money. But there wasn’t! And that one hundred dollars represented the Arnolds’ total worldly wealth. With it they must buy feed for the chickens until they started to lay, pay for any emergencies that might arise, and if eggs didn’t bring as good a price as Edna anticipated, pay the taxes on the farm in the fall.

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