[Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith to apostle John W. Young]
Your wife Christine wrote to us recently representing herself to be in needy circumstance, and asking us to use our good offices to induce you to help her children. We wrote her in answer to this that on a previous occasion (about two years ago) she wrote a similar letter, and that you were communicated with respecting it, and that you answered in effect that inasmuch as it was a domestic affair it appeared only right and proper that she should address you direct regarding it. In reply to this letter Sister Christine has written again, from which we are sorry to learn that she failed to be informed of the contents of your letter referred to; and from her last letter quote as follows:
' ... I had neither home nor means, no parents, no relatives who were in a position to help me, he knew fully that there was nothing to keep me and his two children from want all these twelve years except the effort of my hands, and that my health was such as to make that effort a severe trial he too was mad acquainted with through letters from the children. ... I feel strongly that no man with a vestige of chivalry in his soul would humiliate a woman so as to force her to ask a favor of him that what in all human justice she has a right to claim as her due'the least reparation man can make for a life's happiness destroyed. ... '
We sympathize with Sister Young in the embarrassing position in which she is placed, and agree with her that she should not be required to ask for the assistance you may be able to render and which you should render her; and we trust therefore you will see your way clear to aid her, and that you will have the disposition to help her without further importuning on her part. We appreciate the fact that this is a delicate subject, and that you may feel sensitive about it, but there appears at present to be no other recourse for Sister Christine, and this must be our apology for writing you regarding it.
[Source: Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith, Letter to John W. Young, as quoted in Minutes of the Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1835-1951, Electronic Edition, 2015]
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