Part 3 (1/2)

Such an explanation of his failures was by no means original with Smith, the serious results of an untimely spoken word having been long a.s.sociated with divers magic performances. Joe even tried on his New York victims the Pennsylvania device of requiring the sacrifice of a black sheep to overcome the evil spirit that guarded the treasure.

William Stafford opportunely owned such an animal, and, as he puts it, ”to gratify my curiosity,” he let the Smiths have it. But some new ”mistake in the process” again resulted in disappointment. ”This, I believe,” remarks the contributor of the sheep, ”is the only time they ever made money-digging a profitable business.” The Smiths ate the sheep.

These money-seeking enterprises were continued from 1820 to 1827 (the year of the delivery to Smith of the golden plates). This period covers the years in which Joe, in his autobiography, confesses that he ”displayed the corruption of human nature.” He explains that his father's family were poor, and that they worked where they could find employment to their taste; ”sometimes we were at home and sometimes abroad.” Some of these trips took them to Pennsylvania, and the stories of Joe's ”gazing” accomplishment may have reached Sidney Rigdon, and brought about their first interview. Susquehanna County was more thinly settled than the region around Palmyra, and Joe found persons who were ready to credit him with various ”gifts”; and stories are still current there of his professed ability to perform miracles, to pray the frost away from a cornfield, and the like.*

* Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1880.

CHAPTER IV. -- FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GOLDEN BIBLE

Just when Smith's attention was originally diverted from the discovery of buried money to the discovery of a buried Bible engraved on gold plates remains one of the unexplained points in his history. He was so much of a romancer that his own statements at the time, which were carefully collected by Howe, are contradictory. The description given of the buried volume itself changed from time to time, giving strength in this way to the theory that Rigdon was attracted to Smith by the rumor of his discovery, and afterward gave it shape. First the book was announced to be a secular history, says Dr. Clark; then a gold Bible; then golden plates engraved; and later metallic plates, stereotyped or embossed with golden letters.* Daniel Hendrix's recollection was that for the first few months Joe did not claim the plates any new revelation or religious significance, but simply that they were a historical record of an ancient people. This would indicate that he had possession of the ”Spaulding Ma.n.u.script” before it received any theological additions.

* ”Gleanings by the Way,” p. 229.

The account of the revelation of the book by an angel, which is accepted by the Mormons, is the one elaborated in Smith's autobiography, and was not written until 1838, when it was prepared under the direction of Rigdon (or by him). Before examining this later version of the story, we may follow a little farther Joe's local history at the time.

While the Smiths were conducting their operations in Pennsylvania, and Joseph was ”displaying the corruption of human nature,” they boarded for a time in the family of Isaac Hale, who is described as a ”distinguished hunter, a zealous member of the Methodist church,” and (as later testified to by two judges of the Court of Common Pleas of Susquehanna County)” a man of excellent moral character and of undoubted veracity.”*

Mr. Hale had three daughters, and Joe received enough encouragement to his addresses to Emma to induce him to ask her father's consent to their marriage. This consent was flatly refused. Mr. Hale made a statement in 1834, covering his knowledge of Smith and the origin of the Mormon Bible.** When he became acquainted with the future prophet, in 1825, Joe was employed by the so-called ”money-diggers,” using his ”peek-stone.”

Among the reasons which Mr. Hale gave for refusing consent to the marriage was that Smith was a stranger and followed a business which he could not approve.

* Howe's ”Mormonism Unveiled,” p. 266.

** Ibid., p. 262.

Joe thereupon induced Emma to consent to an elopement, and they were married on January 18, 1827, by a justice of the peace, just across the line in New York State. Not daring to return to the house of his father-in-law, Joe took his wife to his own home, near Palmyra, New York, where for some months he worked again with his father.

In the following August Joe hired a neighbor named Peter Ingersol to go with him to Pennsylvania to bring from there some household effects belonging to Emma. Of this trip Ingersol said, in an affidavit made in 1833:--

”When we arrived at Mr. Hale's in Harmony, Pa., from which place he had taken his wife, a scene presented itself truly affecting. His father-in-law addressed Joseph in a flood of tears: 'You have stolen my daughter and married her. I had much rather have followed her to her grave. You spend your time in digging for money--pretend to see in a stone, and thus try to deceive people.' Joseph wept and acknowledged that he could not see in a stone now nor never could, and that his former pretensions in that respect were false. He then promised to give up his old habits of digging for money and looking into stones. Mr. Hale told Joseph, if he would move to Pennsylvania and work for a living, he would a.s.sist him in getting into business. Joseph acceded to this proposition, then returned with Joseph and his wife to Manchester....

”Joseph told me on his return that he intended to keep the promise which he had made to his father-in-law; 'but,' said he, it will be hard for me, for they [his family] will all oppose, as they want me to look in the stone for them to dig money'; and in fact it was as he predicted.

They urged him day after day to resume his old practice of looking in the stone. He seemed much perplexed as to the course he should pursue.

In this dilemma he made me his confidant, and told me what daily transpired in the family of Smiths.

”One day he came and greeted me with joyful countenance. Upon asking the cause of his unusual happiness, he replied in the following language: 'As I was pa.s.sing yesterday across the woods, after a heavy shower of rain, I found in a hollow some beautiful white sand that had been washed up by the water. I took off my frock and tied up several quarts of it, and then went home. On entering the house I found the family at the table eating dinner. They were all anxious to know the contents of my frock. At that moment I happened to think about a history found in Canada, called a Golden Bible;* so I very gravely told them it was the Golden Bible. To my surprise they were credulous enough to believe what I said. Accordingly I told them I had received a commandment to let no one see it, for, says I, no man can see it with the natural eye and live. However, I offered to take out the book and show it to them, but they refused to see it and left the room. 'Now,' said Joe, 'I have got the d--d fools fixed and will carry out the fun.' Notwithstanding he told me he had no such book and believed there never was such book, he told me he actually went to Willard Chase, to get him to make a chest in which he might deposit the Golden Bible. But as Chase would not do it, he made the box himself of clapboards, and put it into a pillow-case, and allowed people only to lift it and feel of it through the case.”**

* The most careful inquiries bring no information that any such story was ever current in Canada.

** Howe's ”Mormonism Unveiled,” p. 234.

In line with this statement of Joe to Ingersol is a statement which somewhat later he made to his brother-in-law, Alva Hale, that ”this 'peeking' was all d--d nonsense; that he intended to quit the business and labor for a livelihood.”*

* Ibid., p. 268.