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An Apology for the Coincidence of Sevens

THE LAST PHOTO OF RULON S. WELLS AT HIS DESK, APRIL, 1941.

RULON S. WELLS, late senior President of the First Council of the Seventy, was nearing the completion of his eighty-seventh year when death came on the seventh day of May. He was born on the seventh day of July, 1854. Some three years ago, on the occasion of his eighty-fourth birthday, he wrote for his family, with the warmth of that high humor which was so much a part of him, the story of his life in verse, with the apology printed below. He repeated this verse several times in public with good-humored ridicule directed at the absurd superstitions of numerologists.

My Apology

FOR these verses, the fault is mine.
Alas! I wrote them, every line.
In reading them be good and kind;
Fling rhyme and meter to the wind!
I had to tell my story.
For this offense, if you'll forgive,
Then never again so long's I live,
I give my word, begorry.

1854-Birthday Meditations-1938