in
religion that you'll find anywhere." I bought the "solidest" thing for
fifty cents, and do not advise the same outlay to others. The prophet's
life is more marvellous and more instructive than the book whose
production was its chief triumph. That it was an original production
seems probable, as the recent discovery of the celebrated Spalding
manuscript, and a critical examination of the evidence of Mrs. Spalding,
go far to discredit the popular accusation of plagiarism.

Near Kirtland I visited a sweet-faced old lady--not, however, of the
Mormon persuasion--who as a child had climbed on the prophet's knee. "My
mother always said," she told us, "that if she had to die and leave
young children, she would rather have left them to Joseph Smith than to
any one else in the world: he was always kind." This testimony as to
Smith's kindheartedness I found to be often repeated in the annals of
Mormon families.

In criticising my former stories several reviewers, some of them
distinguished in letters, have done me the honour to remark that there
was latent laughter in many of my scenes and conversations, but that I
was unconscious of it. Be that as it may, those who enjoy unconscious
absurdity will certainly find it in the utterances of the self-styled
prophet of the Mormons. Probably one gleam of the sacred fire of humour
would have saved him and his apostles the very unnecessary trouble of
being Mormons at all.

In looking over the problems involved in such a career as Smith's, we
must be struck by the necessity for able and unprejudiced research into
the laws which govern apparent marvels. Notwithstanding the very natural
and sometimes justifiable aspersions which have been cast upon the work
of the Society for Psychical Research, it does appear that the
disinterested service rendered by its more distinguished members is the
only attempt hitherto made to aid people of the so-called "mediumistic"
temperament to understand rather than be swayed by their delusions.
Whether such a result is as yet possible or not, Mormonism affords a
gigantic proof of the crying need of an effort in this direction; for
men are obviously more ignorant of their own elusive mental conditions
than of any other branch of knowledge.

L.D.

MONTREAL, December, 1898.

THE MORMON PROPHET.

_BOOK I._

CHAPTER I.

In the United States of America there was, in the early decades of this
century, a very widely spread exciteme