| 177 in which the meeting was held was quite well filled for the first three days of the session, by an earnest and orderly body of Saints, all alive to the interests of the cause they represented.
There was considerable business of importance done. . . . The missionary field was considered at some length, and provisions made, so far as it was within the power of the assembly to provide, for an active prosecution of the work wherever laborers were and could be laboring. . . .
The routine of daily business was: Assembling at nine, or half past nine in the morning, the Saints held prayer and testimony meeting; the Committees and quorums held at hours of their own choosing those sessions which were deemed advisable by them, for such business as they found necessary; consultations and mutual conferences between the different officers of the church as made necessary-these occupied the forenoon. At one o'clock in the afternoon conference convened for business, and remained in session for from four to five and one half hours; the evening was spent in preaching the word by elders appointed by the chairman of the meeting. The elders appointed responded without an excuse being offered in a single instance, and each one was blessed; the best succession of discourses being preached that has been at any of our previous sessions.-The Saints' Herald, vol. 24, p. 121.
April 15, 1877, a branch was organized at Blue Rapids, Kansas, by Elders Heman C. Smith and I. N. Roberts, composed of sixteen members, principally the fruit of the labor of Elder George W. Shute. G. W. Vail was ordained an elder; J. S. Goble, a priest; and Mahlon Smith, a teacher; and chosen to act in these several offices for the branch.
The annual conference of the Welsh Mission was held at Aberaman, April 29, 1877, Robert Evans, presiding; J. R. Gibbs, secretary; E. Morgan, clerk.
Brigham Young was about this time annoyed with much litigation in the case against him by Ann Eliza Webb Dee, and several decisions and counter decisions were rendered by the courts. Of the latest decision the Herald editor commented on May 15, as follows:
By the late decision of Judge Shaffer, of Utah, in the case of Mrs. Ann Eliza Dee Young against President B. Young, the former is declared not to have been a wife but a menial in the service of President Young, and therefore not entitled to divorce, or alimony, but wages as such menial; and the latter having already paid a sufficient sum for such services as were rendered by Ann Eliza, is discharged from further obligation to pay. Whether this horn of the dilemma will be any more pleasing to President Young, than in the other wherein Ann Eliza would be declared a wife and
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