Adapted from Leaves from My Journal, by Wilford Woodruff; artwork by Douglas Johnson.

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to be continued …

Text from Leaves from My Journal

… We got up in the morning and walked in the rain twelve miles to the house of a man named Bemon, who was also one of the mob from Jackson County. They were about sitting down to breakfast as we came in.

In those days it was the custom of the Missourians to ask you to eat even if they intended to cut your throat as soon as you got through; so he asked us to take breakfast, and we were very glad of the invitation. He knew we were “Mormons;” and as soon as we began to eat he began to swear about the “Mormons.” He had a large platter of bacon and eggs, and plenty of bread on the table, and his swearing did not hinder our eating, for the harder he swore the harder we ate, until we got our stomachs full; then we arose from the table, took our hats, thanked him for our breakfast, and the last we heard of him he was still swearing. I trust the Lord will reward him for our breakfast.

In the early days of the Church, it was a great treat to an Elder in his travels through the country to find a “Mormon;” it was so with us. We were hardly in Arkansas when we heard of a family named Akernan. They were in Jackson County in the persecutions. Some of the sons had been tied up there and whipped on their bare backs with hickory switches by the mob. We heard of their living on Petit Jean River, in the Arkansas Territory, and we went a long way to visit them.

There had recently been heavy rains, and a creek that we had to cross was swollen to a rapid stream of eight rods in width. There was no person living nearer than two miles from the crossing, and no boat. The people living at the last house on the road, some three miles from the crossing, said we would have to tarry till the water fell before we could cross. We did not stop, feeling to trust in God.

Just as we arrived at the rolling flood a negro, on a powerful horse, entered the stream on the opposite side and rode through it. …