eautiful compositions of Beethoven, Gluck, and Mozart, or
the brilliant overtures of Donizetti, Bellini, and Meyerbeer.

Thus my time passed like a happy dream, and as, from the rainy season
having just set in, all travelling was impossible. I remained many weeks
with my kind entertainers, the more willingly, that the various trials I
had undergone had, at so early an age, convinced me that, upon earth,
happiness was too scarce not to be enjoyed when presented to you. Yet in
the midst of pleasure I did not forget the duty I owed to my tribe, and
I sent letters to Joe Smith, the Mormon leader at Nauvoo, that we might
at once enter into an arrangement. Notwithstanding the bad season, we
had some few days of sunshine, in which pretty Miss Emma and I would
take long rambles in the woods; and sometimes, too, my host would invite
the hunters of his neighbourhood, for a general _battue_ against bears,
deer, and wild cats. Then we would encamp out under good tents, and
during the evening, while smoking near our blazing fires, I would hear
stories which taught me more of life in the United States than if I had
been residing there for years.

"Dis-moi qui tu frequentes, je te dirai qui tu es," is the old French
proverb. Mr. Courtenay never chose his companions but among the more
intellectual classes of the society around him, and, of course, these
stories were not only well told, but interesting in their subject. Often
the conversation would fall upon the Mormons, and perceiving how anxious
I was to learn anything about this new sect, my host introduced me to a
very talented gentleman, who had every information connected with their
history. From him I learned the particulars which gave rise to
Mormonism, undoubtedly the most extraordinary imposition of the
nineteenth century.

There existed years ago a Connecticut man, named Solomon Spalding, a
relation of the one who invented the wooden nut-megs. By following him
through his career, the reader will find him a Yankee of the true stock.
He appears at first as a law student; then as a preacher, a merchant,
and a bankrupt; afterwards he becomes a blacksmith in a small western
village: then a land speculator and a county schoolmaster; later still,
he becomes the owner of an iron-foundry; once more a bankrupt; at last a
writer and a dreamer.

As might be expected, he died a beggar somewhere in Pennsylvania, little
thinking that, by a singular coincidence, one of his productions (th