AFTER FIFTY YEARS.

A Strange Discovery — A Spalding MS. Found in Honolulu— A God-Send to the Mormons — A False Impression— Not the "Manuscript Found" — Of No Historic Value — Mr. Patterson's Closing Tribute.

And now comes one of the most remarkable features of this much-discussed and remarkable story. A short time ago President Fairchild of Oberlin College, Ohio, was on a visit with friends residing at Honolulu in the Sandwich Islands. While at the home of Mr. L. L. Rice, an American citizen there, he became interested in some documents which had many years before accumulated in the latter's possession and which had been brought with him from Ohio, his former residence. One of those old and long-neglected manuscripts, on examination, proved to be one of Rev. Spalding's romances — to the great astonishment of both those gentlemen. The fact was soon made public here in the States and was seized upon and heralded to the world by the newspapers as a discovery of the long-lost Manuscript Found of "Rev. Solomon Spalding and the original of the Book of Mormon. The manuscript (after discussion as to the proper disposition to be made of it) was deposited by Mr. Rice in the college library at Oberlin. Various extracts from its pages, bearing no resemblance to the matter of the Book of Mormon, have been published; and the conclusion has been quite general that the Spalding story was a fallacy. The Mormons themselves have regarded the discovery as a God-send and have lost no time in announcing to their readers this marvelous refutation of their enemies' falsehoods. Both the Salt Lake and the Reconstructed branches, it is stated, have procured copies of the work for publication. The former we have not seen; but the latter, issued with much apparent satisfaction and neatly printed in pamphlet form at Lamoni, Iowa, under authority of the church — now lies before us. It professes to be a true and exact copy of the original, and certified to as such; yet its very first line is a falsehood! It entitles the book "The Manuscript Found" of Solomon Spalding when no such title is found anywhere on or in the work. The nearest approach to it is the attestation of Dr. Hurlbut on the fly-leaf as follows:

"The writings of Solomon Spalding as proved by Henry Lake, John N. Miller, Aaron Wright, and others.

"D. P. HURLBUT."

Thus showing conclusively that it is the manuscript obtained by the doctor and brought to Howe in 1834. Besides, it can be traced directly from Howe to Rice — the latter having purchased the Painesville Telegraph a year or two after Howe's book was printed, with the printing office and all its contents. Howe lost track of the manuscript and supposed it might have been destroyed in a fire in his office when in fact it had been delivered with other waste matter to his successor and by him very strangely, instead of being destroyed, carried to Honolulu. That it is the same manuscript is also shown by another circumstance. It will be remembered that Howe in his book refers to a letter obtained with the manuscript indicating that Spalding had imbibed "infidel" opinions. Strange enough, that same letter is still with the MS. as found in Honolulu. Again, the contents of this newly-found manuscript, as described by those having access to it, are identical with those ascribed to it by Howe. So that the evidence is clear:

That this newly-discovered work is really one of Spalding's romances.

That it is the identical one referred to by Howe in his Mormonism Unveiled and which he received from Hurlbut and Hurlbut from the Spaldings in 1833.

That it is not the romance known as Manuscript Found and bears no resemblance to it.

And consequently — that it can bring no comfort to the Mormons in disproof of the Spalding Story."

Mr. Patterson, in closing his valuable little book on the subject, thus eloquently refers to Mr. Spalding and his work:

"It is scarcely necessary to say that Spalding himself must be acquitted of all intention to deceive, even though four of the hearers of his romance, as read by him, have attested his singular presentiment — was it prescience? — that in after years his romance would be accepted by thousands as veritable history. But even he could not have foreseen that this coinage of his brain would ever pass current as having been enstamped by the authority of heaven. The unconscious prophet of a new Islam, in all his imaginings, he did not dream that his hand was outlining the Koranb of a dark delusion; that the fables which beguiled his restless hours would be accepted by hundreds of thousands of his fellow-men as the oracles of God; and that in inglorious yet heroic martyrdom some of them would even seal with their blood their faith in the inspiration of his phantasies. Journeying to Pittsburgh in 1812 with the sanguine hope of soon seeing his romance in print, it never entered his mind that in three-score years and ten thereafter the shades of Laman and Nephi, of Mormon and Moroni, evoked by his magic wand from the sepulchral mounds of Conneaut — the graves of a long-forgotten race — would be stalking over two hemispheres and would be leading through the very city of his sojourn their myriad victims of deception to distant homes of wretchedness and shame. Struggling to escape the burden of his debts, he little imagined how vast the burden he was about unwittingly to lay upon his country.

"Sleep on, humble dreamer, in thy lowly bed! Thy fond desire to win a public hearing for thy wondrous story was denied thee in thy toilsome life. Thou knewest not that a strange immortality awaited it and thee. Rest peacefully, for from thine eye, which sought to penetrate the past alone, this saddest of future visions was mercifully withheld. Surely never hitherto have passed such sorrowful processions near the grave of so innocent an author of their woe."

With this we conclude the review of the senseless gold-laden story. No one really believes it. Even its originators, its eleven witnesses, and their immediate followers had no abiding faith in it, else Cumorah Hill would ere this have been prospected from base to crown in search of those other precious relics said to have been hid away by the angel. Yet its influence has been far-reaching. It has continued to grow, agitating and disturbing every community into which it has made its way, until it now curses half a continent. But it is on the wane; and ere the twentieth century ends, the Story of the Golden Message will have faded from men's memories.