CHAPTER IX 



THE Mormons were originally of the sect 

 known as Latter-day Saints, which flour- 

 ishes wherever Anglo-Saxon gulls are found 

 in sufficient numbers to swallow the egregious 

 nonsense of fanatic humbugs who fatten upon their 

 credulity. In the United States they especially 

 abounded ; but the creed becoming " slow," one 

 Joe Smith, a smart man, rose from its ranks and 

 instilled a little life into the decaying sect. 



Joe, better known as the " Prophet Joe," was 

 taking his siesta one fine day upon a hill in New 

 York State, when an angel suddenly appeared to 

 him, and made known the locality of a new Bible 

 or Testament, which contained the history of the 

 lost tribes of Israel; that these tribes were no 

 other than the Indian nations which possessed the 

 continent of America at the time of its discovery, 

 and the remains of which still existed in their sav- 

 age state ; that through the agency of Joe these 

 were to be reclaimed, collected into the bosom of a 

 church to be there established, according to prin- 

 ciples which would be found in the wonderful book 

 ■-. — and which church was gradually to receive into 



its bosom all other churches, sects, and persuasions, 

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