| 136 CHAPTER 9.
1838.
THE opening of the year 1838 can best be told in the language of Joseph Smith. He writes:-
"A new year dawned upon the church in Kirtland in all the bitterness of the spirit of apostate mobocracy; which continued to rage and grow hotter and hotter, until Elder Rigdon and myself were obliged to flee from its deadly influence, as did the apostles and prophets of old, and as Jesus said, 'When they persecute you in one city, flee to another.' And on the evening of the 12th of January, about ten o'clock, we left Kirtland, on horseback, to escape mob violence, which was about to burst upon us under the color of legal process to cover their hellish designs and save themselves from the just judgment of the law. We continued our travels during the night, and at eight o'clock on the morning of the 13th arrived among the brethren in Norton Township, Medina County, Ohio, a distance of eighty miles from Kirtland; where we tarried about thirty-six hours, when our families arrived, and on the 16th pursued our journey with our families, in covered wagons, toward the city of Far West, in Missouri; passing through Dayton, Eaton, etc., to Dublin, Indiana, where we tarried nine days and refreshed ourselves.
"The weather was extremely cold, and we were obliged to
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