“A blanket flung across a rope divided the room where they worked. On one side sat Joseph [Smith, Jr.] staring into his stones, and on the other was [Martin] Harris writing at a table. Joseph warned his scribe that God’s wrath would strike him down should he dare to examine the plates or look at him while he was translating. Harris never betrayed his trust, though he once admitted that he tried to trick Joseph by substituting an ordinary stone for the seer stone.”

Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 53.