“It was illegal at the time to pretend ‘to tell fortunes, or to discover where lost good may be found.’ Joseph Knight’s recollection that [Joseph] Smith ‘looked in his glass’ to find the right person to bring with him to the hill would elicit memories of the glass-looking charge Joseph Smith was convicted of in 1826. Smith was learning from bitter experience that not everyone shared his enthusiasm for the supernatural.”

Rodger I. Anderson, Joseph Smith’s New York Reputation Reexamined (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 1990), 47.