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Show THEIR "PIOUS" FAIRY TALES. In its issue of Friday, August lli, 1909, the Fillmore Progress-Review prints a funny little letter, signed "Elder Nathinal Ashby," who is a missionar3' laboring in Montana. One of tho items contained in that communication com-munication is descriptive of a sort of "hell-roaring time" a bunch of tho mis sionary boys up there had in celebration celebra-tion of the last twenty-fourth of July, But the silliest story told in that letter let-ter was about an aged man named Peter S. Morrison, whom tho elders had met at Anaconda. From Mr. Morrison, Mor-rison, whose age is given at 9(5 years, tho boys learned that ho lived near Joseph Smith at Palmyra, New York; that ho had seen the plates from which the Book of Mormon is said to have been translated; that he saw. the stone box from which tho nlaies were taken: and that he saw the breastplate one morning while passing through a room where Joseph was at work, but that it was only by accident that he got a glimpse of them, as it was not intended that he'.'should see them so far as he knew. Then Mr. Morrisou went on to tell the missionaries that he lived at Nauvoo and kept right along in the vicinity of the Mormon settlement for many years, but that in spite of all that he had beheld, he had novcr become be-come a member of the church. Finally, Fin-ally, however, Elder Ashby adds, tho missionaries baptized Morrison the d:iy following their conversation with him. So that after oight3'-odd years of familiarity fa-miliarity with Mormonism tho old wn. M--- tleman had eventuallj' become convinced. con-vinced. That, in itself, is quite a wonderful story; but tho recital is kuockod .into smithereens by tho following, fol-lowing, also 'contained in tho letter: President Joseph C. Cowley of Venice. Sevier county. Utah, led him into tho water of baptism, after which lie went before the Lord praying In regard to his tobacco, as ho had been a heavy chewer for eighty-four years, ho asked the Lord to give him a sign If tobacco was not good for him. and almost Instantly lm had to throw It-n way, and he testified that he has no desire for It any more, A great yarn, that. Almost as bad as that one sent home from the South-lorn South-lorn States a couple of years ago. This young missionaiy gravely assured his Sunday school classmates, by letter, that one day he called nt a house and asked for a drink of water. Tho drink was refused him and immediately th well dried up! And tho best of tho thing was that Hie elders at home ped-Ucd ped-Ucd the letter, with its stupid story, about among the young folks in nn effort to produce gape-mouthed awo at the astonishing power of tho Mormon Mor-mon priesthood. It is not wonderful, though, that contact with a supposed1 religion that has for its basis the false pretenses of n bogus prophet will fructify sumo men's sccininglv natural disposition to lie. |