Letters and Manuscripts — Volume 18 (1903)

Lt 174a, 1903

Harper, Walter

St. Helena, California

August 5, 1903

Not sent. See Lt 174, 1903.

[To Walter Harper.]

I will now speak to Brother Harper. I have a message for you, my brother, and I wish to speak to you as a servant of the Lord. I wish to say to you that your course of action toward your wife must change. Since her marriage she has been becoming uneven in her experience. She has felt keenly your attitude toward her mother, and it has thrown her into perplexity because your words and position are not as they ought to be. You will have to counsel with persons, fathers and mothers of understanding, who will advise you. It is the best thing you can do to secure a permanent home for her, that if the daughter in your absence wishes in any way to be where she can associate with the mother, she can do this. 18LtMs, Lt 174a, 1903, par. 1

The strange way you treat her is because you have much confidence in your own wisdom which is mingled with an authority that takes on an overbearing, masterly, ordering and dictating that is so persistent, as much as you would order a child. The wife is to be respected and her wishes to be honored; she [is to] feel that she is not to be commanded, to obey all your requirements. You leave her alone a large part of the time, and where you travel it would not be appropriate for her to go among the rough class. You can do much good as a canvasser, and keeping your mind stayed on the Lord, you will be gentle and win souls to Christ, but this is not the life that would be pleasant [for] Sister Harper. If she could find a place agreeable in a sanitarium to give treatment, it would be a blessing to her, if she is not overworked; but if she is overworked, then she looks on the dark side and sometimes much thinking will lead her to perplexity and uncertainty and she appears changeable and uncertain as to what is best for herself. She wants kindness, respect, and gentleness. 18LtMs, Lt 174a, 1903, par. 2

[Whether] it is her duty to ignore her mother—it is not the duty of any child to do this. Had you provided her a home ever so humble and said to her, “This shall be our home,” [even] if it was in rented rooms where there was a family in the house, it would be appropriate. The mother has to overcome her feelings. When [she is] so nervous and she takes a sedative, it makes a bad state of things and she says and does many things that are strange. Her feelings lead her astray, but she is a mother, and this must never be treated indifferently. The mother has said many things and acted many things that have alienated Walter Harper from her, and yet there is an error on both sides of the question. 18LtMs, Lt 174a, 1903, par. 3