President Grant's letterhead, 1924
President Grant's letterhead, 1924
"Heir, misborn and misbegotten,/
Of thy folly, Education,/
. . . Youthful minds and hearts misleading,/ . . . Incense unto Atheism."
p.19
WHITNEY, Orson Ferguson (1855-1931; ordained APOSTLE April 9, 1906 by Joseph F. Smith). LOVE AND THE LIGHT; An Idyl of the Westland . . . [Salt Lake City, Utah: Copyright, 1918, Joseph F. Smith, Trustee-in-Trust].
18½ cm. (7½ inches tall). [4]leaves, 128 pages + frontispiece. Partially unopened. Original blue gilt-lettered cloth. Some spotting to the boards (see illustration below); internally fine.
::SOLD::
on eBay for a paltry $40
(November 29, 2003; Item 2204816792).
My wistful congratulations to the alert, sole bidder!
Flake 9773 (only edition). Mormon poetry written to save LDS youth from cerebral temptations and "so-called Higher Criticism" which Whitney thinks is leading them away from the Church. The heroine, a Rocky Mountain girl, is tinged with atheism learned at college. Her boyfriend, a Harvard graduate, "is won to the religion of Jesus Christ, and endeavors to convert the lady of his love." (preliminary leaves).
Laid
in is a very good, rather anti-intellectual TYPED LETTER
SIGNED
BY HEBER J. GRANT — not one of those
pedestrian, mass-produced presentation letters seen in so many LDS books, but
an original communication discussing the book at hand, offered to the recipient
(a relative of the author) in condolence upon the death of his mother. It
is dated on Grant's Church President stationery, dated November 11, 1924 (2
pages). The signature is large and fine, as always, and Grant has added a two-word
note in his own hand on the first page. "I consider that the poem within
the poem," writes Grant, "which begins on page 16 ^"The Educator."^
stamps Brother Whitney one of the great poets of America, and I think it is
one of the finest he has ever written."
Well, hardly! - but then, Grant was by vocation a businessman, not a poet, and by his own statement, a miserable student as a result of astigmatism. He was President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1918-45.
