"Oh! they are a set of d--d liars. I have had a home here, and been here, except when on business, all my life--ever since I came to this country, and I know these fellows, they make these lies on Smith, because they love a lie better than the truth. I can take you to a great many old settlers here who will substantiate what I say, and if you want to go, just come around to my place across the street here, and I'll go with you." "Well, that is very kind, Mr. Taylor, and fair; and if we have time we will call around and give you the chance; but we are first going to see these fellows who, so rumor says, know so much against them." "All right; but you will find they don't know anything against those men when you put them down to it; they could never sustain anything against Smith." "Do you think Smith ever got any plates out of the hill he claimed to?" "Yes; I rather think he did. Why not he find something as well as anybody else? Right over here, in Illinois and Ohio, in mounds there, they have discovered copper plates since, with hieroglyphics all over them; and quite a number of the old settlers around here testified that Smith showed the plates to them--they were good, honest men, and what is the sense in saying they lied? Now, I never saw the Book of Mormon--don't know anything about it, nor care; and don't know as it was ever translated from the plates. You have heard about the Spaulding romance; and some claim that it is nothing but the books of the Bible that were rejected by the compilers of the Bible; but all this don't prove that Smith never got any plates." We close this chapter with an extract from the writings of Elder Oliver Cowdery, published in a very early day of the Church's history: "But in consequence of certain false and slanderous reports which have been circulated, justice would require me to say something upon the private life of one whose character has been so shamefully traduced. By some he is said to have been a lazy, idle, vicious, profligate fellow. These I am prepared to contradict, and that, too, by the testimony of _many_ persons with whom I have been intimately acquainted, and know to be individuals of the strictest veracity and unquestionable integrity. All these strictly and virtually agree in saying, that he was an honest, upright, virtuous and faithfully industrious young man. And those who say to the contrary can be influenced by no other motive than to destroy the reputation of one who never injured any man in either property or person." CHAPTER VIII. JOSEPH'S ACCOUNT OF THE DISCOVERY OF THE PLATES.