Smith's old friend Martin Harris, now a high priest, and Cyrus Smalling, one of the Seventy, are lumped among Parish's "lackeys,", of whom Smith says: "They are so far beneath contempt that a notice of them would be too great a sacrifice for a gentleman to make." Of Leonard Rich, one of the seven presidents of the seventy elders, Smith says that he "was generally so drunk that he had to support himself by something to keep from falling down." J. F. Boynton and Luke Johnson, two of the Twelve, are called "a pair of young blacklegs," and Stephen Burnett, an elder, is styled "a little ignorant blockhead, whose heart was so set on money that he would at any time sell his soul for $50, and then think he had made an excellent bargain." Smith's own personal character was freely attacked, and the subject became so public that it received notice in the Elders' Journal. One charge was improper conduct toward an orphan girl whom Mrs. Smith had taken into her family. Smith's autobiography contains an account of a council held in New Portage, Ohio, in 1834, at which Rigdon accused Martin Harris of telling A. C. Russel that "Joseph drank too much liquor when he was translating the Book of Mormon," and Harris set up as a defence that "this thing occurred previous to the translating of the Book."* * Millennial Star, Vol. XV, p. 12. There was a good deal of talk concerning a confession "about a girl," which Oliver Cowdery was reported to have said that Smith made to him. Denials of this for Cowdery appeared in the Elders' Journal of July, 1838, one man's statement ending thus, "Joseph asked if he ever said to him (Oliver) that he (Joseph) confessed to any one that he was guilty of the above crime; and Oliver, after some hesitation, answered no." The Elders' Journal of August, 1838, contains a retraction by Parley P. Pratt of a letter he had written, in which he censured both Smith and Rigdon, "using great severity and harshness in regard to certain business transactions." In that letter Pratt confessed that "the whole scheme of speculation" in which the Mormon leaders were engaged was of the "devil," and he begged Smith to make restitution for having sold him, for $2000, three lots of land that did not cost Smith over $200.