[Heber C. Kimball to Vilate Kimball]
"... I could weep like a child if I could get away by myself, to think that I for one moment have been the means of causing you any sorrow; I know that you must have many bad feelings and I feel to pray for you all the time, I assure you that you have not been out of my mind many minutes at a time, since I left you. My feelings are of that kind that it makes me sick at heart, so that I have no appetite to eat. My temptations are so severe it seems sometimes as though I should have to lay down and die, I feel as if I must sink beneath it. I go into the woods every chance I have, and pour out my soul before God that he would deliver me and bless you my dear wife, and the first I would know I would be in tears weeping like a child about you and the situation that I am in; but what can I do but go ahead? My dear Vilate do not let it cast you down for the Lord is on our side; this I know from what I see and realize and I marvel at it many times. You are tried and tempted and I am sorry for you, for I know how to pity you. I can say that I never suffered more in all my life than since these things come to pass; and as I have said, so say I again, I have felt as if I should sink and die. Oh my God! I ask thee in the name of Jesus to bless my dear Vilate and comfort her heart and deliver her from temptation, and from all sorrow and open her eyes and let her see things as they are, for Father thou knowest our sorrow; be pleased to look upon thy poor servant and handmaid and grant us the privilege of living the same length of time that one may not go before the other, for thou knowest that we desire this with all our hearts ... "
[Source: Letter: Heber C. Kimball to Vilate Kimball, in Whitney, Helen Mar, Jeni Broberg Holzapfel, and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History, Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997]
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