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 boarding at the house of Isaac Hale. After a month's fruitless effort Stoal was induced by Joseph to abandon the undertaking; but meanwhile the youth had fallen in love with Hale's pretty daughter, Emma, and wished to marry her. Hale objected, owing to his continued assertions that he had seen visions, and the resulting persecutions; so Joseph took Emma to the house of Squire Tarbill, at South Bainbridge, where they were married the 18th of January, 1827, and thence returned to his father's farm, where he worked during the following season.

Every year went Joseph to the hill Cumorah to hold communion with the heavenly messenger, and on the 22d of September, 1827, Moroni delivered to him the plates, ‘When the appointed hour came, the prophet, assuming his practised air of mystery, took in hand his money-digging spade and a large napkin, and went off in silence and alone in the solitude of the forest, and after an absence of some three hours, returned, apparently with his sacred charge concealed within the folds of the napkin. Reminding the (Smith) family of the original “command” as revealed to him, strict injunction of non-intervention and non-inspection was given to them, under the same terrible penalty as before denounced for its violation. Conflicting stories were afterwards told in regard to the manner of keeping the book in concealment and safety, which are not worth repeating, further than to mention that the first place of secretion was said to be under a heavy hearthstone in the Smith family mansion. Smith told a frightful story of the display of celestial pyrotechnics on the exposure to his view of the sacred book—the angel who had led him to the discovery again appearing as his guide and protector, and confronting ten thousand devils gathered there, with their menacing sulphurous flame and smoke, to deter him from his purpose! This story was repeated and magnified by the believers, and no doubt aided the experiment upon superstitious minds which eventuated so successfully.’ ''Tucker's Orig. and Prog. Mor.'', 30–31. ‘A great variety of contradictory stories were related by the Smith family before they had any fixed plan of operation, respecting the finding of the plates from which their book was translated. One is, that after the plates were taken from their hiding-place by Jo, he again laid them down, looked into the hole, where he saw a toad, which immediately transformed itself into a spirit and gave him a tremendous blow. Another is, that after he had got the plates, a spirit assaulted him with the intention of getting them from his possession, and actually jerked them out of his hands. Jo, nothing daunted, seized them again, and started to run, when his Satanic majesty, or the spirit, applied his foot to the prophet's seat of honor which raised three or four feet from the ground.’ Howe's Mormonism Unveiled, 275–6. The excavation was at the time said to be 160 feet in extent, though that is probably an exaggeration: It had a substantial door of two-inch plank, and a secure lock. Lapse of time and other causes have almost effaced its existence. ''Tucker's Origin and Prog. Mor.'', 48. ‘In 1843, near Kinderhook, Illinois, in excavating a large mound, six brass plates were discovered of a bell-shape four inches in length and covered with ancient characters. They were fastened together with two iron wires almost entirely corroded, and were found along with charcoal, ashes, and human bones, more than twelve feet below the surface of a mound of the sugar-loaf form, common in the Mississippi Valley. Large trees growing upon these artificial mounds attest their great antiquity… No key has yet been discovered for the interpretation of the engravings upon these brass plates, or of the strange gylphs upon the ruins of Otolum in Mexico.’  Daniel Wedderburn, in Popular Science Monthly, Dec. 1876; see also Times and Seasons, iv. 186–7, and engraved cuts in Taylor's Discussions, and in Mackay's The Mormons, 26–7. On the authority of Kidder, Mormonism, 23–6, Willard Chase, a carpenter, said: ‘In the fore part of September (I believe) 1827, the prophet requested me to make him a chest, informing me that he designed to move back to Pennsylvania, and expecting soon to get his gold book, he wanted a chest to lock it up, giving me to understand, at the same time, that if I would make the chest he would give me a share in the book. I told him my business was such that I could not make it; but if he would bring the book to me, I would lock it up for him. He said that would not do, as he was commanded to keep it two years without letting it come to the eye of any one but himself. This commandment, however, he did not keep, for in less than two years twelve men said they had seen it. I told him to get it and convince me of its existence, and I would make him a chest; but he said that would not do; as he must have a chest to lock the book in as soon as he took it out of the ground. I saw him a fews days after, when he told me I must make the chest. I told him plainly that I could not, upon which he told me that I could have no share in the book. A few weeks after this conversation he came to my house and related the following story: That on the 22d of September he arose early in the morning and took a one-horse wagon of some one that had stayed over night at their house, without leave or license; and, together with his wife, repaired to the hill which contained the book. He left his wife in the wagon, by the road, and went alone to the hill, a distance of thirty or forty rods from the road; he said he then took the book out of the ground and hid it in a tree-top and returned home. He then went to the town of Macedon to work. After about ten days, it having been suggested that some one had got his book, his wife went after him; he hired a horse, and went home in the afternoon, stayed long enough to drink one cup of tea, and then went for his book, found it safe, took off his frock, wrapt it round it, put it under his arm, and ran all the way home, a distance of about two miles. He said he should think it would weigh sixty pounds, and was sure it would weigh forty. On his return home he said he was attacked by two men in the woods, and knocked them both down and made his escape, arrived safe, and secured his treasure. He then observed that if it had not been for that stone (which he acknowledged belonged to me) he would not have obtained the book. A few days afterward he told one of my neighbors that he had not got any such book, and never had; but that he told the story to deceive the damned fool (meaning me), to get him to make a chest.’ Others give other accounts, but it seems to me not worth while to follow them further. and the urim and thummim with which to translate them, charging him on pain of dire disaster