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.



CHAPTER IV. FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GOLDEN BIBLE

Just when Smith's attention was originally diverted from the
discovery of buried money to the discovery of a buried Bible
engraved on gold plates remains one of the unexplained points in
his history. He was so much of a romancer that his own statements
at the time, which were carefully collected by Howe, are
contradictory. The description given of the buried volume itself
changed from time to time, giving strength in this way to the
theory that Rigdon was attracted to Smith by the rumor of his
discovery, and afterward gave it shape. First the book was
announced to be a secular history, says Dr. Clark; then a gold
Bible; then golden plates engraved; and later metallic plates,