"I am sorry to say I shall not be able to give you any information relative to the persons you name. They certainly could not have been friends of Mr. Lambdin."[122]
[Footnote 122: "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" p. 9.]
If due weight be given to these considerations, I do not think much importance can attach to the testimony of Mrs. Eichbaum. It simply represents the confused impressions arising from the neighborhood gossip and public discussion of the subject, in a mind grown old.
What Mr. Patterson has said at the close of the testimony pro et con, which he presents in his article in the History of Washington County, is worth repeating:
"These witnesses are all whom we can find, after inquiries extending through some three years, who can testify at all to Rigdon's residence in Pittsburg before 1816, and to his possible employment in Patterson's printing-office or bindery. Of this employment none of them speak from personal knowledge. In making inquiries among two or three score of the oldest residents of Pittsburg and vicinity, those who had any opinion on the subject invariably, so far as now remembered, repeated the story of Rigdon's employment in Patterson's printing-office, as if it were a well-known and admitted fact; they 'could tell all about it,' but when pressed as to their personal knowledge of it or their authority for the conviction they had none."[123]
[Footnote 123: "Who Wrote the Book of Mormon?" p. 11.]
The search for evidence was prolonged and thorough; evidently, at the outset, the confidence was great; and the results evidently a disappointment. That becomes more apparent when one reads the foot note of the publishers oil Mr. Patterson's passage above.
"If any one would learn an impressive lesson upon the transitory nature of man's hold upon the remembrance of his fellow-men, let him engage in an investigation into some matter of local or personal history dating back a half century ago. So rapidly, in the very places where a man has lived and labored, does the recollection of him fade into rumor, or myth, or oblivion. The candid reader will doubtless suspend his judgment on this hitherto accepted theory of Rigdon's printership, or set it down as, at the most, only probable, but certainly not yet proved."[124]
[Footnote 124: Ibid. p. 11, foot note.]
To these reflections on how quickly recollections of man in the place where he wrought some portion of his life's work fade into myth or rumor, or oblivion, there may be added the other side of the case; let ever so little a circumstance happen to a man in some place where part of his life was passed, and if that man becomes famous, or through any cause becomes notorious, then mark how local gossips and myth-makers spring up on every hand, magnifying the most trivial incidents into events of importance; how new incidents are often invented, which with those that have some foundation in fact are constantly undergoing variations by additions or subtractions or a change in application, until all is distorted, confused and confounded. And many "can tell all about it, until," as Mr. Patterson remarks, "pressed as to their personal knowledge, or their authority for their conviction, then it is discovered they have none." And then one stands face to face with the utter worthlessness of that kind of "evidence" to establish anything good or ill concerning a man, or an event, or a cause. It is out of just such "evidence" as this that Mr. Schroeder and his fellow "Spauldingites," seek to construct for the Book of Mormon an origin other than that vouched for by Joseph Smith and his associates.