"The argumentative style and the failure to distinguish between personal knowledge and argumentative inferences is all readily understood when the history of this statement is made known. It seems that two preachers, named D. R. Austin and John Storrs, are responsible for this letter. Mrs. Davidson never wrote it, but afterwards stated that 'in the main' it was true. Even with her reaffirmance of the story as published, we cannot give it evidentiary weight except in those matters where it is plain from the nature of things that she must have been speaking from personal knowledge." [82] [Footnote 82: _American Historical Magazine,_ September, 1906, pp. 393-4. _Ante_ pp. 28, 29.] There is but one conclusion possible on the point at issue. Mrs. Davidson never made the statement, nor signed it. It was the work of the Reverends John Storrs and D. R. Austin--a forgery. MUTILATION OF THE HAVEN-DAVIDSON INTERVIEW. At this point I take note of what Mr. Schroeder says in relation to an omission of a question and answer in the Haven-Davidson interview in Elder George Reynolds' "Myth of the Manuscript Found;" and also of what Mr. Schroeder characterizes as "John Taylor's lying perversion of this alleged interview as reported in his 'Three Nights Public Discussion.'" The question and answer referred to are held, in effect, to re-instate the Davidson document as evidence, after denying it to be Mrs. Davidson's statement, or that she signed it. The question and answer are as follows: _"Ques._ Is what is written in the letter true? _Ans_. In the main it is." This is omitted in Elder Reynolds' "Myth of the Manuscript Found" (1883); and copying the Haven interview from his work into my own treatise of the Book of Mormon in the "Young Men's Manual" for 1905-6, the same omission, of course, is made; but of which omission this writer was ignorant until Mr. Schroeder's article called attention to it. Why the omission occurs in Mr. Reynolds' book, I do not know; and although Mr. Reynolds is still alive, his health is so shattered at this time it would be as useless as it is impossible to question him upon the subject. [82] [Footnote 82: This in November, 1908. Mr. Reynolds died in August, 1909.]