[Albert Chandler]
My recollection of Joseph Smith Jr. and of the first steps taken in regard to his Bible have never been printed. At the time of the printing of the Mormon Bible by Egbert B. Grandin of the Sentinel I was an apprentice in the book-bindery connected with the Sentinel office. I helped to collate and stitch the Gold Bible ...
Joseph Smith Jr., who read through the wonderful spectacles, pretended to give the scribe the exact reading of the plates, even to spelling, in which Smith was wofully deficient. Martin Harris was permitted to be in the room with the scribe, and would try the knowledge of Smith, as he told me, saying that Smith could not spell the word February, when his eyes were off the spectacles through which he pretended to work. This ignorance of Smith was proof positive to him that Smith was dependent on the spectacles for the contents of the Bible. Smith and the plates containing the original of the Mormon Bible were hid from view of the scribe and Martin Harris by a screen.
... He would call public meetings and address them himself. He was enthusiastic, and went so far as to say that God, through the Latter Day Saints, was to rule the world. I heard him make this statement, that there would never be another President of the United States elected ; that soon all temporal and spiritual power would be given over to the prophet Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints. ... he told me that he saw the devil, in all his hideousness, on the road, just before dark, near his farm, a little north of Palmyra. ...
[Albert Chandler to William Linn, 22 December 1898, William Linn, The Story of the Mormons (New York: Macmillan Co., 1902), 48-49., as cited in Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents: Albert Chandler To William Linn]
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