138 The Fundamentals in that region, and especially in their builders. This led him to plan a religious romance, in which he brought a colony of the Lost Tribes from Jersualem into this country, where they developed into two nations, the Nephites and the Lamanites, a purely imaginary people. The Book of Mormon, composed of fifteen different books, gives an account of their wanderings, hardships and battles. The records are alleged to have been written on plates of brass. These plates begin to jingle on the second page of the Book of Mormon, and they continue to jingle until they are finally sealed up and hidden away in the hill of Cumorah, near Palmyra, in 420 A. D. Now there are ten intelligent witnesses, who stated over their affidavit in 1833, when the subject was fresh in mind, that about 1811-12, they heard Solomon Spaulding reading a religious story from the “Manuscript Found”, trying to show that the American Indians are the descendants of the Lost Tribes. They remembered the quaint phraseology, and the queer names, Lehi, Nephi, Jarom, Moroni, and the rest. The expression, “and it came to pass”, occurred so often, the boys nick-named Spaulding, “Old Come-to-Pass”. When the Book of Mormon was published these witnesses identified at once the queer names and phraseology. When Esquire Wright heard the Book of Mormon read in Conneaut he exclaimed, “ ‘Old Come-to-Pass’ has come to life again”. These witnesses were John Spaulding, brother of Solomon, his wife Martha Spaulding, Henry Lake, business partner of Solomon Spaulding, John N. Miller, who worked for Spaulding, Aaron Wright, Oliver Smith, and Naham Howard, three of Spaulding’s neighbors, and Artemas Cunningham, of Geauga County, who visited Spaulding in October, 1811, to collect a debt. Spaulding showed him a story he was writing about the lost tribes. Mr. Cunningham spent half the night listening to the story. When the Book of Mormon appeared he recognized that in outline it was the same thing that Spauld ing had read to him. The two other witnesses are the widow
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