The means now of ascertaining whether the Book of Mormon came from Spaulding's manuscript was completed. A _verbatim et literatim_ transcript was obtained from Mr. L. L. Rice by President Joseph F. Smith, who in 1884 and 1885 was residing in the Sandwich Islands. This, in 1886, was published by the "Deseret News" exactly according to the transcript, with all its errors of grammar and orthography, as also with all the alterations, erasures, etc., made by its author, indicated. After a careful examination of it, I think everybody will come to the same conclusion that President Fairchild did: namely, that there is "no resemblance between the two, in general or in detail. There seems to be no name or incident common to the two--a fact that completely explodes the theory that Spaulding's manuscript was the origin of the Book of Mormon. Mr. Rice is of the same opinion as President Fairchild, though more emphatic in the expression of it. He says: 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. Then in a postscript to the letter from which the above is a quotation, he says: 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 Spaulding 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 Spaulding 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. Subsequently and in another letter he said: My opinion is, from all I have seen and learned, that this is the only writing of Spaulding, and there is no foundation for the statement of Deming and others that Spaulding made another story, more elaborate, of which several copies were written, one of which Rigdon stole from a printing office in Pittsburg, etc. [19] Mr. Rice finally deposited the original Spaulding manuscript with the Oberlin College, where it now lies secure for the inspection of the curious, and a standing refutation to the extravagant claims that have been made respecting the part it played in the origin of the Book of Mormon.