| 472 of Painesville, who is also getting up some kind of a book I believe on Mormonism, wants me to send it to him. Mrs. Dickinson, of Boston, claiming to be a relative of Spalding, and who is getting up a book to show that he was the real author of the Book of Mormon, wants it. She thinks, at least, it should be sent to Spalding's daughter, a Mrs. Somebody-but she does not inform me where she lives. Deming says that Howe borrowed it when he was getting up his book, and did not return it, as he should have done, etc.
This Manuscript does not purport to be "a story of the Indians formerly occupying this continent;" but is a history of the wars between the Indians of Ohio and Kentucky, and their progress in civilization, etc. It is certain that this Manuscript is not the origin of the Mormon bible, whatever some other manuscript may have been. The only similarity between them, is, in the manner in which each purports to have been found-one in a cave on Conneaut Creek-the other in a hill in Ontario County, New York. There is no identity of names, of persons, or places; and there is no similarity of style between them. As I told Mr. Deming, I should as soon think the Book of Revelation was written by the author of Don Quixote, as that the writer of this Manuscript was the author of the Book of Mormon. Deming says Spalding made three copies of "Manuscript Found," one of which Sidney Rigdon stole from a printing office in Pittsburg [Pittsburgh]. You can probably tell better than I can what ground there is for such an allegation.
As to this Manuscript, I can not see that it can be of any use to anybody, except the Mormons, to show that IT is not the original of the Mormon bible. But that would not settle the claim that some other manuscript of Spalding was the original of it. I propose to hold it in my own hands for a while, to see if it can not be put to some good use. Deming and Howe inform me that its existence is exciting great interest in that region. I am under a tacit, but not a positive pledge to President Fairchild, to deposit it eventually in the library in Oberlin College. I shall be free from that pledge, when I see an opportunity to put it to a better use.
Yours, etc.,
L. L. RICE.
P. S.-Upon reflection, since writing the foregoing, I am of the opinion that no one who reads this Manuscript will give credit to the story that Solomon Spalding was in any wise the author of the Book of Mormon. It is unlikely that any one who wrote so elaborate a work as the Mormon bible, would spend his time in getting up so shallow a story as this, which at best is but a feeble imitation of the other. Finally I am more than half convinced that this is his only writing of the sort, and that any pretense that Spalding was in any sense the author of the other, is a sheer fabrication. It was easy for anybody who may have seen this, or heard anything of its contents, to get up the story that they were identical.
L. L. R.
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