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Show Page 75 canal to Albany and steamer to New York. Orson made this trip ahead of Parley, who tarried in Detroit to see through the publication of a pamphlet 1 outlining the persecutions of the Mormon people in Missouri. One of the most unexpected consequences of those trials was the new notoriety which faced Mormon preachers in the East. Orson, who had preached in New York City two years before, was astounded at the crowds. The western troubles did not fully account for the public interest in Mormonism; in truth, lecture halls of every kind were packed on every subject, for "lecturing" had become something of a vogue, along with "self-education." Men like Emerson and Channing were already profiting immensely from the new interest in the lecture circuit, and the Mormon preachers found public intrigue growing over the abstractions of Latter-day Saint doctrines as well - while in New York, Parley published a tract on "the eternal duration of matter." It was not to be long before Orson was to follow his brother's lead in forging a new collection of "Pratt's Tracts" which would bring Mormonism to the attention of literally thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. At any rate, although interest was undoubtedly faddish and shortlived, Orson testified that "there are hundreds believing" although few being baptized. December 21 Orson met with the Prophet Joseph Smith at Philadelphia (after taking possibly his first rail trip, approximately forty miles from Philadelphia to Monmouth, New Jersey) to hear the disappointing report of the Prophet's interview with President Martin van Buren. The President, at one time a small politician from Orson's native Columbia County, had refused to meddle with the internal affairs of the state of Missouri when Smith had pleaded for federal intervention. But Joseph, in these conferences, mingled his contempt for the national government with the glimmerings of new instructions, new doctrine-expanding |