And so the variations run from beginning to end. They are just such variations, too, as would exist if the Taylor version was produced as conjectured. I trust I may be pardoned for being insistent at this point. I was personally acquainted with the late President John Taylor, and am also his biographer. His letters, official and personal, as also his journals, passed through my hands; his most private life was laid open to me, and I know him to have been a highly honorable gentleman, far above such low subterfuge as that charged against him in the coarse vulgarisms employed by Mr. Schroeder, and which, from no standpoint whatever, are justifiable. [83] [Footnote 83: See "The Life of John Taylor," by B.H. Roberts, (1892). Lest in some rejoinder to this reply Mr. Schroeder should return to this subject of the Taylor variations, in the Haven-Davidson interview, and should seek further to establish his point of view by referring to what is sometimes alleged to be Elder Taylor's denial of the existence of the plural marriage system of the Church when he was in France, (1850) I wish to say that in the above "Life of John Taylor" the alleged denial is dealt with at length, pp. 222-5.] MR. SCHROEDER AND THE DAVIDSON STATEMENT. There is something amusing in the attitude of Mr. Schroeder towards this Davidson statement. Although Mr. Schroeder declares in so many words that "Mrs. Davidson never wrote it," and hence must admit it to be a forgery by Reverend gentlemen; yet, since the Haven interview represents Mrs. Davidson as saying that it was "true in the main," Mr. Schroeder dogmatizes thus in regard to this "piece of evidence:"--"Even with her re-affirmance 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." [84] Why, in the name of all that is reasonable? If her re-affirmance is to re-instate any part of the story as worthy of belief, why not all of it, and all the parts equally? Is Mr. Schroeder to pick and choose from his own witnesses as he will, allowing this, but discarding that, as suits his personal view of the Spaulding theory? [Footnote 84: _American Historical Magazine_, September, 1906, p. 394, _ante_ p. 29.]