When the newspapers are solicitous of patronage from the advertising public they will often set forward the maxim that "there is nothing pays like printer's ink". This maxim was supported by the experience of Mr. Smith. Different journals had proclaimed his peculiarities so industriously that the accounts they supplied must have reached the eye of Mr. Rigdon at Pittsburgh. At this moment indeed his eye was broad awake for notices of a genius like the youthful prodigy in New York.

Rigdon had succeeded in acquiring possession of Spaulding's Book of Mormon about the first of January 1823 at which date the firm of Patterson and Lambdin was caught in the wreck of bankruptcy. It was natural that he should now engage his mind upon the evolution of a plan by means of which the most effective use could be made of the work. Several years would pass by before the labor of adapting it to the purpose that sat next to his heart could be accomplished; but when this service was achieved he would urgently desire a channel through which it might be commended to the attention of the public in the guise of a sacred revelation. It is hardly possible that he could have anticipated that the person who should be selected to discover it would be in a situation to command a sufficient amount of money to put the work through the press. But Sidney considered that he would encounter no heavy difficulty in raising the requisite pecuniary advances for that and in case the public could be led to believe that the manuscript had been once discovered and proclaimed as undoubtedly containing the record of divine communications to mankind.

It was imperative however that the book as it left his own hands should first be transcribed. If it were exhibited especially in Ohio or in Pennsylvania with large portions of it composed in his hand-writing there was reason to fear that some of those who might examine it would recognize the character by which circumstance it was plain to foresee that his name and scheme would both be blasted.

Furthermore, if the person who professed to have exhumed it should give the public to understand that the foolscap upon which Messrs, Rigdon and Spaulding had composed their effusions was the same as he had found underneath the surface of the earth, the cheat would be apparent both by reason of the English characters and also by reason of the fact that the writing material we now employ was not in use during the presumably remote age of Nephi and the other saints of the Mormon calendar. Such therefore was the nature of the problem which Rigdon was called to solve: he must find a person who would not only be willing to discover the Book of Mormon but would also have it in his power to cause it to be copied into another hand. It is questionable whether he would have permitted any portion of his own chirography to go before the eye of a printer who resided at even so remote a place as Palmyra N.Y. Detection would be destruction and he must avoid it by all the means at his disposal. Accordingly it will appear farther on that as soon as Oliver Cowdery had finished transcribing the last word of his manuscript in 1829, it was forthwith delivered into the hand of the angel and was never seen again. Speaking of the fabulous "plates" Joseph Smith says: "According to arrangements the messenger called for them; I delivered them up to him and he has them in his charge until this day being the second day of May 1838" (Pearl of Great Price pp. 67-8). The arrangements here alluded to for the return of the original document to the home of Rigdon were doubtless precise and binding and he was on the ground at the earliest moment when it was possible for him to reclaim it.

Joseph Smith was the master of a greater amount of vigor than Mr. Rigdon could have anticipated that such a specimen of humanity should display; nay he was more vigorous than was any way agreeable to Sidney. He not only was able to hoodwink Martin Harris into the preposterous measure of paying the printer, and by that means to bring forward the Book of Mormon without imposing a particle of that kind of labor and sacrifice upon his principal, but he also was agile enough, in consequence of this achievement and of his remarkable capacity in other regards, himself to vault into the position of leadership, forcing the man who was really at the head of the movement to assume the second position. This posture of affairs was galling to Rigdon's vanity, and to his relish for supremacy, but Joseph had fairly deserved his advantage, and he was always skilful enough to assert it. In describing a passage at arms that befell between them in Missouri many years after the events that transpired in New York, an old Mormon leader adds: "After that, Rigdon never countermanded the orders of the Prophet to my knowledge--he knew who was boss" (Life and Confessions of John D. Lee. St. Louis 1877, p. 78). Could Sidney have been made aware that he was now engaged in choosing a master instead of a tool there is reason to suspect that he would have looked elsewhere for an agent to help on his project, leaving Joseph to continue the amusement of treasure-seeking among his numerous dupes about Manchester and South Bainbridge.

The session of the Redstone Association during the first days of September 1823 would be an occasion of special interest to Rigdon. The church in Pittsburgh over which he then presided, by his arts and efforts to betray it into the power of Mr. Campbell, had been divided into factions. It is likely that he had already procured the excommunication of the party which resisted his own and Mr. Campbell's wiles. The battle would again be joined and waged at the Association, and he was naturally solicitous about the result. The conflict was more interesting than he anticipated. The favor of the body was clearly directed towards his adversaries, as was to be expected; but in addition to this calamity the attention of the body was fixed upon the machinations of Mr. Campbell himself, whether in Pittsburgh or elsewhere, and that gentleman was compelled to resort to fight in order to avoid something worse (Richardson, Memoirs of A. Campbell, ii, pp. 68-70).

After the adjourment of the Association Mr. Rigdon would make his way toward the northern part of New York with a view to cultivate the acquaintance of Joseph Smith, Jr. His first interview with that person is described as having occurred on the night of the 21st and the day of the 22d of September 1823. When about the year 1838 Joseph sat down to compose his Autobiography, his brilliant imagination transfigured Sidney into an agel called Nephi, who came down through the ceiling that night in a halo of celestial light. All of the earlier copies of the Autobiography gave this appearance to Nephi, but in the recent editions the honor has been transferred to Moroni. Either designation would suit Mr. Rigdon equally well; he had composed "the small plates of Nephi", as well as the Book of Moroni, and it was not singular that upon occasion each of these names should be applied to him.

The angel Nephi was likely also visible to the other members of the Smith household. Lucy Smith informed her neighbor, Mrs. Abigail Harris, that "she thought he must be a Quaker, as he was dressed very plain" (Howe, p. 253). When she came to the task of composing the "Biographical Sketches" of her son she merely describes the public accession of Rigdon to the movement, and passes over in silence the fact that he was ever before under her roof (p. 179). Discarding the pictorial covering in which the prophet has shrouded his first contact with the angel Nephi (Moroni), it is likely that Sidney and Jospeh took a bed together in the hovel of the family and almost throughout the night of the 21st of September, the former kept his associate awake describing the details of his plan and the part which Mr. Smith was expect to bear in it. A complete understanding would be reached respecting even the minutiae of it so far as these could be calculated in advance.

The next day the angel Nephi found his way southward with all convenient speed, since he had an engagement to accompany Alexander Campbell to a religious jousting at Washington Ky., which was appointed to be opened on the 14th of October. Most of the subsequent communications between Rigdon and his colleague in New York, it may be presumed, were transacted by epistolary communication until the month of September 1827, when Sidney would find it essential to come in person and deliver his now modified Book of Mormon. Of course the position is not advanced that it was impossible Rigdon should have resorted to Manchester during the progress of the four years that intervened; it is only claimed that everything that was meanwhile undertaken in this interest could have been effected by the aid of epistolary correspondence.