"I acted in this matter honestly, and I will always abide by my notes taken down at the time. I was cautious—very careful of what I did, because I knew that the church would damn me and prove me false if it could. I stood on the exactness of truth squarely."
I have thus far assumed that Stuart and Matheny really wrote the letters of disclaimer addressed to Reed. Mr. Reed states that he is "amazed to find" that they did not write the statements attributed to them by Lamon. The reader is by this time sufficiently familiar with this reverend gentleman's methods that he will not be "amazed to find" that Stuart and Matheny did not write these disclaimers. I now affirm that James H. Matheny did not write a word of the letter purporting to have been written by him. It was written by the Rev. J. A. Reed! We have not the expressed declaration of Mr. Stuart that this is true of the letter imputed to him, but there is other evidence which makes it clearly apparent that this letter was also written by Mr. Reed.
Nor is this all. I shall now endeavor to show that the greater part of the evidence presented by Reed, in his lecture, was composed and written by himself. Let us take the four letters credited respectively to Edwards, Lewis, Stuart, and Matheny. I shall attempt to demonstrate the common origin of these letters, first, by their form; secondly, by the language of their contents.
The different forms employed in epistolary correspondence are numerous, far more numerous than generally supposed. To illustrate: four hundred letters, written by as many different persons, and all addressed to the same person, were, without examination, divided into one hundred parcels of four letters each. They were then examined in regard to the form employed by the writer. The heading, the address, the introduction, and the subscription were noted—no attention being paid to the body of the letter, or the signature. In not one of these one hundred parcels were found four letters having the same form. The heading of these letters exhibited nine different forms; the address, fourteen; the introduction, eight; and the subscription, eleven.
Again, nearly every writer employs certain idioms of language that are peculiar to him, and which reveal his identity, even though he tries to conceal it.
Let us now institute a brief analysis of the four letters under consideration. Errors will be noticed, not for the purpose of reflecting upon the literary attainments of the writer, but solely with a view of discovering his identity. These are mostly of a trivial character, confined to marks of punctuation, etc.; and it is a recognized fact that a majority of educated persons, including many professional writers, are more or less deficient in the art of punctuation. In proof of the common authorship of these four letters, the following reasons are submitted:
1. In all of them we recognize a stiff formality—a studied effort to conform to one ideal standard.
2. All of them were written at Springfield, Ill., and all omit the name of the state.
3. In each of them, the day of the month is followed by the suffix, "th." This, if not wholly improper, is not common usage. Had these letters been written by the four persons to whom they are ascribed, at least three of them would have omitted it.
4 In all, but one, the address is "Rev. J. A. Reed," and in the exception the writer merely substitutes "Jas." for "J."