Oliver B. Huntington tells of an incident he heard Joseph relate just after he returned from Washington, D.C., when President Martin VanBuren told him, “Your cause is just but I can do nothing for you.”
“He said that he was one day riding with other gentlemen and some lady passengers in a stage coach all closely packed inside, secure from the weather, and the driver pulled up at a tavern, tied his lines to the boot (driver’s seat) and went in.
“Those coaches were great cumbersome things; high tops, decked over, with railing on, where mail sacks and trunks were carried sometimes, and sometimes passengers rode up there. The driver’s seat was in front so high that the top of the coach formed a little support to his back.
“Almost as soon as the driver was in the house, the horses struck out on a run – four high-spirited animals with no one to guide them – they fortunately kept the road. Ladies screamed and gentlemen attempted to jump out.
“The Prophet quieted them and told them all to “keep still,” and he would stop the team. So he went onto the coach and down into the driver’s seat – horses all the while making the best time they could – got hold of the lines and guiding the horses gently pulled them into a trot, turned around to hunt the driver, or wait for his coming.
“The people in that coach did as he told them, and he soon had the team under control.
“How many men among the sixty millions of inhabitants of these United States could perform such an act even if they had the courage to undertake it.
Springville, Utah, October 15, 1890.
Oliver B. Huntington, “The Young Woman’s Journal,” Volume 2, #2, p. 77.