Joseph F. Smith's Childhood Memory of the Prophet Joseph Smith

Joseph F. Smith recalls a childhood encounter with the Prophet Joseph Smith shortly before the Prophet's martyrdom. The Prophet and others were crossing the Mississippi river in a boat, landed near the Smith home, and entered the house, where Joseph Smith took the young boy on his knee and caressed him, speaking words that Joseph F. Smith remembered well throughout his life.

Fuller account of this event (in the witness’s own words):

Then both went into the house and sat down; they chatted and talked with each other and while my father was changing his clothes—I suppose his collar and cuffs and something of that kind, probably—Joseph the prophet sat there. He took me on his knee and trotted me a little and then he looked at me a little more carefully and finally he said, “Hyrum, what is the matter with Joseph here?” “Well,” he says, “I don’t know; what do you think is the matter?” “Why, he looks as though he had not a drop of blood in him.” “Oh!” Father says, “that is because he has been living on milk only,” for up to that time . . . I had never eaten a thing harder than milk; I was living on it.