Читать книгу The Story of the Mormons, from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901 - William Alexander Linn - Страница 12

* "Gleanings by the Way" (1842), p. 225.

We come now to the history of Joe's own "peek-stone" (as the family generally called it), that which his father says he discovered by using the one that he first saw. Willard Chase, of Manchester, New York, near Palmyra, employed Joe and his brother Alvin some time in the year 1822 (as he fixed the date in his affidavit)* to assist him in digging a well. "After digging about twenty feet below the surface of the earth," he says, "we discovered a singularly appearing stone which excited my curiosity. I brought it to the top of the well, and as we were examining it, Joseph put it into his hat and then his face into the top of the hat. It has been said by Smith that he brought the stone from the well, but this is false. There was no one in the well but myself. The next morning he came to me and wished to obtain the stone, alleging that he could see in it; but I told him I did not wish to part with it on account of its being a curiosity, but would lend it. After obtaining the stone, he began to publish abroad what wonders he could discover by looking in it, and made so much disturbance among the credulous part of the community that I ordered the stone to be returned to me again. He had it in his possession about two years." Joseph's brother Hyrum borrowed the stone some time in 1825, and Mr. Chase was unable to recover it afterward. Tucker describes it as resembling a child's foot in shape, and "of a whitish, glassy appearance, though opaque."**

* Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," p. 240.

** Tucker closes his chapter about this stone with the

declaration "that the origin [of Mormonism] is traceable to the

insignificant little stone found in the digging of Mr. Chase's well in

1822." Tucker was evidently ignorant both of Joe's previous experience

with "crystal-gazing" in Pennsylvania and of "crystal-gazing" itself.

The Smiths at once began turning Chase's stone to their own financial account, but no one at the time heard that it was giving them any information about revealed religion. For pay they offered to disclose by means of it the location of stolen property and of buried money. There seemed to be no limit to the exaggeration of their professions. They would point out the precise spot beneath which lay kegs, barrels, and even hogsheads of gold and silver in the shape of coin, bars, images, candlesticks, etc., and they even asserted that all the hills thereabout were the work of human bands, and that Joe, by using his "peek-stone," could see the caverns beneath them.* Persons can always be found to give at least enough credence to such professions to desire to test them. It was so in this case. Joe not only secured small sums on the promise of discovering lost articles, but he raised money to enable him to dig for larger treasure which he was to locate by means of the stone. A Palmyra man, for instance, paid seventy-five cents to be sent by him on a fool's errand to look for some stolen cloth.

* William Stafford's affidavit, Howe's "Mormonism Unveiled," p.

237.

Certain ceremonies were always connected with these money-digging operations. Midnight was the favorite hour, a full moon was helpful, and Good Friday was the best date. Joe would sometimes stand by, directing the digging with a wand. The utmost silence was necessary to success. More than once, when the digging proved a failure, Joe explained to his associates that, just as the deposit was about to be reached, some one, tempted by the devil, spoke, causing the wished-for riches to disappear. Such an explanation of his failures was by no means original with Smith, the serious results of an untimely spoken word having been long associated with divers magic performances. Joe even tried on his New York victims the Pennsylvania device of requiring the sacrifice of a black sheep to overcome the evil spirit that guarded the treasure. William Stafford opportunely owned such an animal, and, as he puts it, "to gratify my curiosity," he let the Smiths have it. But some new "mistake in the process" again resulted in disappointment. "This, I believe," remarks the contributor of the sheep, "is the only time they ever made money-digging a profitable business." The Smiths ate the sheep.

These money-seeking enterprises were continued from 1820 to 1827 (the year of the delivery to Smith of the golden plates). This period covers the years in which Joe, in his autobiography, confesses that he "displayed the corruption of human nature." He explains that his father's family were poor, and that they worked where they could find employment to their taste; "sometimes we were at home and sometimes abroad." Some of these trips took them to Pennsylvania, and the stories of Joe's "gazing" accomplishment may have reached Sidney Rigdon, and brought about their first interview. Susquehanna County was more thinly settled than the region around Palmyra, and Joe found persons who were ready to credit him with various "gifts"; and stories are still current there of his professed ability to perform miracles, to pray the frost away from a cornfield, and the like.*

* Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1880.