As far as Mormonism was connected with its reputed founder, Joseph, always called "Joe Smith," it had its origin in the brain and heart of an ignorant, deceitful mother. Joe Smith's mother moved in the lowest walks of life, but she had a kind of mental power, which her son shared. With them both, the imagination was the commanding faculty. It was "vain" but vivid. To it was subsidized reason, conscience, truth. Both mother and son were noted for a habit of extravagant assertion. They would look a listener full in the eye, and without confusion or blanching would fluently improvise startling statements and exciting stories, the warp and woof of which were alike sheer falsehood. Was an inconsistency alluded to, nothing daunted, a subterfuge was always at hand. As one old man, who knew them well, said to me. "You could'nt face them down. They'd lie and stick to it." Many of the noblest specimens of humanity have arisen from a condition of honest poverty; but few of these from one of dishonest poverty. Agur apprehended the danger when he said, "lest I be poor and steal." Mrs. Smith used to go to the houses of the village, and do family washings. But if the articles were left to dry upon the lines and not secured by their owners before midnight, the washer was often the winner—and in these nocturnal depredations she was assisted by her boys, who favored in like manner poultry yards and grain bins. Her son Joe never worked save at chopping bees and raisings, and then whisky was the impetus and the reward. The mother of the high-priest of Mormonism was superstitious to the last degree. The very air she breathed was inhabited by "familiar spirits that peeped and wizards that muttered." She turned many a penny by tracing in the lines of the open palm the fortunes of the inquirer. All ominous signs were heeded. No work was commenced on Friday. The moon over the left shoulder portended calamity; the breaking of a mirror, death. Even in the old Green Mountain State, before the family immigrated to the Genesee country, the then West, Mrs. Smith's mind was made up that one of her sons should be a prophet. The weak father agreed with her that Joseph was the "genus" of their nine children. So it was established that Joseph should be the prophet. To such an extent did the mother impress this idea upon the boy, that all the instincts of childhood were restrained. He rarely smiled or laughed. "His looks and thoughts were always downward bent." He never indulged in demonstrations of fun, since they would not be in keeping with the profound dignity of his allotted vocation. His mother inspired and aided him in every scheme of duplicity and cunning. All acquainted with the facts agree in saying that the evil spirit of Mormonism dwelt first in Joe Smith's mother.

Bad hooks had much to do with the origin of Mormonism. Joe Smith could read. He could not write. His two standard volumes were "The Life of Stephen Burroughs," the clerical scoundrel, and the autobiography of Capt. Kidd, the pirate. This latter work was eagerly and often perused. There was a fascination to him in the charmed lines:

" My name was Robert Kidd,

As I sailed, as I sailed,

And most wickedly I did.

And God's laws I did forbid.

As I sailed, as I sailed."

. . .

He could reveal, full too well, the place where stolen property, or wandering flocks could be found. Caskets of gold stored away by the Spaniards, or by his hero, the redoubtable Captain Kidd, coffers of gems, oriental treasures, the "wealth of Ormus and of Ind," gleamed beneath the ground in adjacent fields and woodlands

. . .

The perseverance of Joe Smith was equal to his audacity. Both were boundless. But he alone could never have wrought out the institution of Mormonism. Here we have "black spirits, red spirits and gray." Early in the summer of 1827 a "mysterious stranger" seeks admitance to Joe Smith's cabin. The conferences of the two are most private. This person, whose coming immediately preceded a new departure in the faith, was Sidney Rigdon, a backsliding clergyman, at this time a Campbellite preacher in Mentor, Ohio. Now we have "a literary genius behind the screen." Rigdon was versatile in his gifts, had a taste for theological and scientific discussion, was shrewd, wily, deep and withal utterly unprincipled. Soon after his appearance on the stage, Mormonism begins to assume "a local habitation and a name." . . .

. . .

But who wrote the book? Surely not Smith or Rigdon. We will go back to the time when Joe Smith lay in his cradle in Sharon, Vt. In 1809, a Congregational minister, Rev. Solomon Spaulding, a graduate of Darmouth College, left his native state of Vermont, . . .He wrote a story in Biblical phraseology, delineating in a fanciful manner the wanderings, wars, exploits, and fate of his primeval people. . . . Without doubt, Mr. Spaulding's romance, entitled "The Manuscript Found" is the Golden Bible, or Book of Mormon.

But how came Rigdon or Smith, or both, in the possession of Mr. Spaulding's book? Here we have not absolute certainty. There were two or three ways in which the men and the book could have been brought together. This is common to each—by theft.