The next two years passed quietly in Kirtland.  Susannah, imbued, as indeed were all Smith’s friends, with his belief that the peace was but for a time, cherished her husband as though death were near, and grieved him by no outward nonconformity to pious practices.  Many chance comments which she made were straws which might have shown him the way the current of her thought tended underneath her habitual silence, but they showed him nothing.  It was mortifying to her to observe that Smith, rarely as he saw her, was always cognisant of her mental attitude, while her husband remained ignorant.

Susannah gave up the girlish habit of fencing with facts that it appeared modest to ignore.  She was perfectly aware that she exercised a distinct influence over the prophet, of what sort or degree she could not determine.  Little as she desired this influence, she could not withhold a puzzled admiration for Smith’s conduct.  He rarely spoke to her except in the most meagre and formal way, and all his decrees which tended for her elevation in the eyes of the community or for her personal comfort were so expressed that no personal bias could be detected.

She asked herself if Smith practised this self-restraint for conscience’ sake, or from motives of policy, or whether it was that several distinct selves were living together within him, and that what appeared restraint was in reality the usual predominance of a part of him to which she bore little or no relation.  There was much else in his character to admire and much to condemn.  He had steadily improved himself in education, in mental discipline, and in personal appearance and address.  He could hardly now be thought the same man as when he had first preached the new doctrine in Manchester.  This bespoke an intense and unresting ambition, and yet the selfishness that is the natural result of such ambition was absent.  As far as his arduous work would permit, he gave himself lavishly to wife and child, to all the brethren, rich and poor, when they asked for his ministrations.  The motherless babies whom he had helped Emma to nurse through their infancy had gone back to their father’s care, but there was never a time when some poor child or destitute woman was not a member of his household.  On the other hand, many of the actions of his public life were questionable.  He had established a bank in Kirtland, of which he was the president.  Even Halsey admitted to Susannah that this was a great mistake, that the bank ought to have been under the control of some one who understood money matters; the prophet did not.  He had also set up a cloth mill, and undertaken to farm a large tract of land in the public interest.  The prophet showed to much better advantage when instituting new religious ceremonies, of which there were now many and curious, or when giving forth “revelations” which had to do with the principles of economy rather than its practical details.  Susannah thought that the voice of the Gentiles all around them, shouting false accusations of greed and dishonesty, would sooner or later find much apparent confirmation if no financier could be found to lay a firm hand upon the prophet’s sanguine tendency toward business speculation.