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Show A NEW HISTORIAN. One of. the incidents of the recent Mormon conference which must have made the great concourse con-course effulgent with pride was the selection of Joseph F. Smith, Jr., as assistant church historian. histo-rian. An outsider not knowing the magic that is in the name might wonder where so young a man had got so adult a pull. Had he been a Cannon, a Young or a Taylor, he might have remained an ignoble tape vendor or truck heaver at the Lord's store, but his name is Smith, and he leaps over all menial taks and at one fell bound becomes a historian. Certain distinguished .citizens who have aspired as-pired to become historians have seen fit to first acquire an education, and to supplement this with years of effort and comprehensive study. Macau-lay Macau-lay and Bancroft and Creasey never presumed to J-grasp J-grasp the historic quill until through decades of toil they had learned to master many languages, I had scanned with intense care the sacerdotal and V religious history of the world, and could outline with nice distinction the difference In the manners man-ners and customs of the ancients as compared those of the human phenomena of the pres- day. But it would .seem that the methods of those distinguished historians were antiquated and obsolete. ob-solete. What they roally needed was not erudition erudi-tion or education, but a revelation from the batteries bat-teries beyond the uttermost worlds, so that, however how-ever ignorant they might have been, however dense and fanatical, they could still, touched with the inspirational finger of the Infinite, have written writ-ten history wierdly and wonderfully. So with this young and unlettered son of the Mormon prophet. He was born within the Very shadow of the great sanctuary, of a sire who ostensibly os-tensibly communicates directly with deity, and the supposition Is that while he is both immature and a bigot, he will receive, in a reflected way, enough of the divine afflatus to write a history such as never was read before, and never ought to be again. |