THE ORDER

 

THE TEN VIRGINS

 

The news spread quickly to the confusion and frustration of many who were in town for the day without suitable containers. The man from the North String confronted with the alternative of going all the way home and back or purchasing another container on the spot suddenly came up with an ingenious idea. One glass kerosene lamp at home had a perfectly good chimney but a cracked well. They had been intending to buy a new glass well base for sometime but had put it off. Now he could kill two birds with one - stone, purchase the needed lamp well and have a suitable container to take his share of the "medicine" home.

The idea caught on and before evening there had been a run on glass lamp wells, with a resulting shelf full of unsold matching chimneys. The traffic up and down the cellar steps had been heavy and the barrel was almost empty by an hour before closing time.

It was the custom for Apostle Lorenzo Snow to occasionally drop by the co-op on a Saturday night to greet the employees and see how things were going. What he witnessed that night must have puzzled  him then as well as in subsequent years when he had occasion to recall to mind the unusual spectacle.

"I ran the spigot and Tom Blackburn handed me the empty lamp wells and gave the filled ones back to the customers. I paused for a moment to look up when there was some commotion on the stairs. There were several men in a line coming down the steps with empty lamps, and a number in line going up with full lamps. At the top of the stairs looking down on the whole business was President Lorenzo Snow. He raised his cane and pointed to the men coming up the steps, counting them out loud. There were five. 'Aha,' he said, 'the five wise virgins all with 'their lamps filled, but with no chimneys. And you brethren with empty lamps will have to hustle or the bridegroom, at his coming, will find you like the five foolish virgins. Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him.' He kind of smiled and went away chuckling to himself. I don't know whether or not he new what was in the lamps but I've been much obliged to him all my life that he never mentioned the matter again. We closed up for the night right after that."