JOSEPH'S MARRIAGE. 45
boarding at the house of Isaac Hale. After a month's fruitless efifort Steal was induced by Joseph to aban- don the undertaking; but meanwhile the youth had fallen in love with Hale's pretty daughter, Emma, and wished to marry her. Hale objected, owing to his continued assertions that he had seen visions, and the resulting persecutions; so Joseph took Emma to the house of Squire Tarbill, at South Bainbridge, where they were married the 18th of January, 1827, and thence returned to his father's farm, where he worked during the following season.^
Every year went Joseph to the hill Cumorah to hold communion with the heavenly messenger, and on the 22d of September, 1827, Moroni delivered to him the plates,® and the urim and thummim with which to translate them, charging him on pain of dire dis-
^ Among the many cliarges of wrong-doing ascribed to Smith from first to last, was that of having stolen Hale's daughter. In answer it is said that the young woman was of age, and had the right to marry whom and as she chose.
^ ' When the appointed hour came, the prophet, assuming his practised air of mystery, took in hand his money-digging spade and a large napkin, and went off in silence and alone in the solitude of the forest, and after an absence of some three hours, returned, apparently with his sacred charge con- cealed within the folds of the napkin. Reminding the (Smith) family of the original "command" as revealed to him, strict injunction of non-intervention and non-inspection was given to them, under the same terrible penalty as be- fore denounced for its violation. Conflicting stories were afterwards told in regard to the manner of keeping the book in concealment and safety, which are not worth repeating, further than to mention that the first place of secre- tion was said to be under a heavy hearthstone in the Smith family mansion. Smith told a frightful story of the display of celestial pyrotechnics on the ex- posure to his view of the sacred book — the angel who had led him to the dis- covery again appeai'ing as his guide and protector, and confronting ten thou- sand devils gathered there, with their menacing sulphurous flame and smoke, to deter him from his purpose ! This story was I'epeated and magnified by the believers, and no doubt aided the experiment upon superstitious minds which eventuated so successfully.' Tuckei'^s Orig. and Prog. Mor., .30-31. 'A great variety of contradictory stories were related by the Smith family before they had any fixed plan of operation, respecting the finding of the plates from which their book was translated. One is, that after the plates were taken from their hiding-place by Jo, he again laid them down, looked into the hole, where he saw a toad, which immediately transformed itself into a spirit and gave him a tremendous blow. Another is, that after he had got the plates, a spirit assaulted him with the intention of getting them from his possession, and actually jerked them out of his hands. Jo, nothing daunted, seized them again, and started to run, when his Satanic majesty, or the spirit, applied his foot to the prophet's seat of honor which raised three or four feet from the ground.' Howe's Mormonlwi Unveiled, 275-G. The excavation was at the time said to be IGO feet in extent, though that is probably an ex-