A Footnote: 'Authorship of the Book of Mormon'

My attention has been called to an article by Mr. Theodore Schroeder in the January issue of this magazine, by way of "reply" to my paper in the July, 1917, issue, entitled "Psychological Tests for the Authorship of the Book of Mormon." Had my argument solely consisted of the disjuncta membra which he has torn bleeding from the body of it, it would indeed have deserved contempt. To anyone who has read the emasculated and perverted version all I need to say is, go back and read, for the second or first time, the argument which I really did make. And let him note that the theme is not the authorship of the Book of Mormon (which must by a variety of proofs be awarded, at least in the main, to Joseph Smith) but the contribution which certain psychological tests make to the settlement of the question. Readers who carefully ponder the array of correspondences which I put upon exhibit will not have difficulty in perceiving their collective weight. But Mr. Schroeder speaks with such confidence about my mental peculiarities (as though these had any bearings upon the data presented), and with such authority about Mormon literature, that I must add a few words of warning. Unfortunately in his "psychoanalysis" of my humble self he has discovered, as Josh Billings would say, "much that ain't so." He