The Mormon Prophet | Page 2

of copies of the Book
of Mormon, saying solemnly, "Sister, here is the solidest thing in
religion that you'll find anywhere." I bought the "solidest" thing for
fifty cents, and do not advise the same outlay to others. The prophet's
life is more marvellous and more instructive than the book whose
production was its chief triumph. That it was an original production
seems probable, as the recent discovery of the celebrated Spalding
manuscript, and a critical examination of the evidence of Mrs. Spalding,
go far to discredit the popular accusation of plagiarism.
Near Kirtland I visited a sweet-faced old lady--not, however, of the
Mormon persuasion--who as a child had climbed on the prophet's knee.
"My mother always said," she told us, "that if she had to die and leave
young children, she would rather have left them to Joseph Smith than
to any one else in the world: he was always kind." This testimony as to
Smith's kindheartedness I found to be often repeated in the annals of
Mormon families.
In criticising my former stories several reviewers, some of them
distinguished in letters, have done me the honour to remark that there
was latent laughter in many of my scenes and conversations, but that I
was unconscious of it. Be that as it may, those who enjoy unconscious
absurdity will certainly find it in the utterances of the self-styled
prophet of the Mormons. Probably one gleam of the sacred fire of
humour would have saved him and his apostles the very unnecessary
trouble of being Mormons at all.
In looking over the problems involved in such a career as Smith's, we
must be struck by the necessity for able and unprejudiced research into
the laws which govern apparent marvels. Notwithstanding the very
natural and sometimes justifiable aspersions which have been cast upon

the work of the Society for Psychical Research, it does appear that the
disinterested service rendered by its more distinguished members is the
only attempt hitherto made to aid people of the so-called "mediumistic"
temperament to understand rather than be swayed by their delusions.
Whether such a result is as yet possible or not, Mormonism affords a
gigantic proof of the crying need of an effort in this direction; for men
are obviously more ignorant of their own elusive mental conditions
than of any other branch of knowledge.
L.D.
MONTREAL, December, 1898.

THE MORMON PROPHET.

_BOOK I._


CHAPTER I.
In the United States of America there was, in the early decades of this
century, a very widely spread excitement of a religious sort. Except in
the few long-settled portions of the eastern coast, the people were
scattered over an untried country; means of travel were slow; news
from a distance was scarce; new heavens and a new earth surrounded
the settlers. In the veins of many of them ran the blood of those who
had been persecuted for their faith: Covenanters, Quakers, sectaries of
diverse sorts who could transmit to their descendants their instincts of
fiery zeal, their cravings for "the light that never was on sea or land,"
but not that education by contact with law and order which, in older
states, could not fail to moderate reasonable minds.

With the religious revivals came signs and wonders. A wave of peculiar
psychical phenomena swept over the country, in explanation of which
the belief most widely received was that of the direct interposition of
God or the devil. The difficulty of discerning between the working of
the good and the bad spirit in abnormal manifestations was to most
minds obviated by the fact that they looked out upon the confusing
scene through the glasses of rigidly defined opinion, and according as
the affected person did or did not conform to the spectator's view of
truth, so he was judged to be a saint or a demoniac. Few sought to learn
rather than to judge; one of these very few was a young man by name
Ephraim Croom. He was by nature a student, and, being of a feeble
constitution, he enjoyed what, in that country and time, was the very
rare privilege of indulging his literary tastes under the shelter of the
parental roof.
In one of the last years of the eighteenth century Croom the elder had
come with a young wife from his father's home in Massachusetts to
settle in a township called New Manchester, in the State of New York.
He was a Baptist by creed; a man of strong will, strong affections, and
strong self-respect. Taking the portion of goods which was his by right,
he sallied forth into the new country, thrift and intelligence written
upon his forehead, thinking there the more largely to establish the
prosperity of the green bay tree, and to serve his God and generation
the better