Up to this time, Hull's remarkable cunning had never availed him much. He had made various petty inventions, but had realized very little from them; he had then made some combinations as regarded the internal-revenue laws referring to the manufacture and sale of tobacco, and these had only brought him into trouble with the courts; but now, when the boundless resources of human credulity were suddenly revealed to him by the revivalist, he determined to exploit them. This evolution of his ideas strikingly resembles that through which the mind of a worthless, shiftless, tricky creature in western New York—Joseph Smith—must have passed forty years before, when he dug up "the golden plates" of the "Book of Mormon," and found plenty of excellent people who rejoiced in believing that the Rev. Mr. Spalding's biblical novel was a new revelation from the Almighty.
The whole matter was thus fully laid open, and it might have been reasonably expected that thenceforward no human being would insist that the stone figure was anything but a swindling hoax.
Not so. In the Divinity School of Yale College, about the middle of the century, was a solemn, quiet, semi-jocose, semi-melancholic resident graduate—Alexander McWhorter. I knew him well. He had embarked in various matters which had not turned out satisfactorily. Hot water, ecclesiastical and social, seemed his favorite element.[29] He was generally believed to secure most of his sleep during the day, and to do most of his work during the night; a favorite object of his study being Hebrew. Various strange things had appeared from his pen, and, most curious of all, a little book entitled, "Yahveh Christ," in which he had endeavored to demonstrate that the doctrine of the Trinity was to be found entangled in the consonants out of which former scholars made the word "Jehovah," and more recent scholars "Yahveh"; that this word, in fact, proved the doctrine of the Trinity.[30]
[29] The main evidence of this is to be found in "Truth Stranger Than Fiction: A Narrative of Recent Transactions involving Inquiries in Regard to the Principles of Honor, Truth, and Justice, which Obtains in a Distinguished American University," by Catherine E. Beecher, New York, 1850.
[30] See "Yahveh Christ, or the Memorial Name," by A. McWhorter, Boston, 1857.
He now brought his intellect to bear upon "the Cardiff Giant," and soon produced an amazing theory, developing it at length in a careful article.[31]
[31] See McWhorter, "Tammuz and the Mound-builders," in the "Galaxy," July, 1872.
This theory was simply that the figure discovered at Cardiff was a Phenician idol; and Mr. McWhorter published, as the climax to all his proofs, the facsimile and translation of an inscription which he had discovered upon the figure—a "Phenician inscription," which he thought could leave no doubt in the mind of any person open to conviction.
That the whole thing had been confessed a swindle by all who took part in it, with full details as to its origin and development, seemed to him not worthy of the slightest mention. Regardless of all the facts in the case, he showed a pathetic devotion to his theory, and allowed his imagination the fullest play. He found, first of all, an inscription of thirteen letters, "introduced by a large cross or star—the Assyrian index of the Deity." Before the last word of the inscription he found carved "a flower which he regarded as consecrated to the particular deity Tammuz, and at both ends of the inscription a serpent monogram and symbol of Baal."
This inscription he assumed as an evident fact, though no other human being had ever been able to see it. Even Professor White, M.D., of the Yale Medical School, with the best intentions in the world, was unable to find it. Dr. White was certainly not inclined to superficiality or skepticism. With "achromatic glasses which magnified forty-five diameters" he examined the "pinholes" which covered the figure, and declared that "the beautiful finish of every pore or pinhole appeared to me strongly opposed to the idea that the statue was of modern workmanship." He also thought he saw the markings which Mr. McWhorter conjectured might be an inscription, and said in a letter, "though I saw no recent tool-marks, I saw evidences of design in the form and arrangement of the markings, which suggested the idea of an inscription." And, finally, having made these concessions, he ends his long letter with the very guarded statement that, "though not fully DECIDED, I INCLINE TO THE OPINION that the Onondaga statue is of ancient origin."[32]