"The voice said, 'I say unto thee, she shall see the white stone, and
shall be told the thing that she shall do for the salvation of her soul;
and I say unto thee, Joseph Smith junior, that thou shalt say unto her
to look upon the stone, for she is chosen to go through suffering and
grief for a little space, and after that to have great riches and
honour, and in the world to come life everlasting.'"

As he spoke he was holding up the stone, which glistened in the
sunlight, before her eyes.

Susannah stared at it to prove to herself that there was nothing
remarkable about it. The feeling of opposition seemed to die of itself,
and then she had a curious sensation of arousing herself with a start
from a fixed posture and momentary oblivion. That afternoon as she was
going home, and in the following days, phrases and sentences from the
prophecy which Joseph Smith had pronounced in regard to her clung to her
mind. In disdain she tried to tell herself that the man was mad; in
childlike wonder she considered what might be the mystery of the vision
within the stone and the prophecy if he were not mad. She had never
heard of crystal-gazing; the phrase "mental automatism" had not then
been invented by the psychologists; still less could she suspect that
she herself might have come partially under the influence of hypnotic
suggestion. The large kindliness of the new prophet, the steady sobriety
and childlikeness of his demeanour, the absence of any appearance of
policy or premeditation, were not in harmony with fraud or madness. Her
gentle intelligence was puzzled, as all the candid historians of this
man have since been puzzled. Then, tired of the puzzle, she fell again
to contemplating scraps of his speech, which, having a Scriptural sound,
suggested piety. "She shall be told the thing that she shall do for the
salvation of her soul," "She is chosen to go through suffering and grief