In reviewing the evidence I am unable to believe that, had Smith’s doctrine been conscious invention, it would have lent sufficient power to carry him through persecutions in which his life hung in the balance, and his cause appeared to be lost, or that the class of earnest men who constituted the rank and file of his early following would have been so long deceived by a deliberate hypocrite.  It appears to me more likely that Smith was genuinely deluded by the automatic freaks of a vigorous but undisciplined brain, and that, yielding to these, he became confirmed in the hysterical temperament which always adds to delusion self-deception, and to self-deception half-conscious fraud.  In his day it was necessary to reject a marvel or admit its spiritual significance; granting an honest delusion as to his visions and his book, his only choice lay between counting himself the sport of devils or the agent of Heaven; an optimistic temperament cast the die.

In describing the persecutions of his early followers I have modified rather than enlarged upon the facts.  It would, indeed, be difficult to exaggerate the sufferings of this unhappy and extraordinarily successful sect.

A large division of the Mormons of to-day, who claim to be Smith’s orthodox following, and who have never settled in Utah, are strictly monogamous.  These have never owned Brigham Young as a leader, never murdered their neighbours or defied the law in any way, and so vigorous their growth still appears that they claim to have increased their number by fifty thousand since the last census in 1890.  Of all their characteristics, the sincerity of their belief is the most striking.  In Ohio, when one of the preachers of these “Smithite” Mormons was conducting me through the many-storied temple, still standing huge and gray on Kirtland Bluff, he laid his hand on a pile of copies of the Book of Mormon, saying solemnly, “Sister, here is the solidest thing 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.