Reverend Henry Caswall, M.A., an Englishman, a Professor of Divinity in Kemper College, St. Louis, Missouri, spent three days, in 1842, in civilian dress, in Nauvoo, after seeing in St. Louis three hundred English converts on their way to Nauvoo. He told about the sport he had in fooling Joseph Smith and the people whom he met into believing that a Greek psalter he had with him was a new find, perhaps a lost scripture for the Prophet to decipher. He attributed to the Prophet the appearance of a knave and a clown, using exceedingly coarse language.

In reporting his talk with Joesph Smith, he forgot that the Prophet and many other Church members had studied, Greek, Hebrew, and other languages, sufficiently to recognize Greek script. Such mistakes are often made by those who fail to tell the truth. Caswall's bitter opposition to Mormonism was revealed in the book he wrote a year later.