OCR Text |
Show Page 285 "My trials, though hard to endure, have been somewhat lightened, by the constant knowledge that I have done my duty to other branches of my family..." 34 In New York City, Orson completed drafts for the revised version of the Book of Mormon, which was to be printed at Liverpool, and spent much of his time poring over algebraic demonstrations of his new work on the physics of motion. Finally, in December, he cleared New York harbor on the steamship "Wyoming" with the carefully crafted foolscap in his satchel. Rough water did not disturb him - he was accustomed to it, for this was his fifteenth Atlantic crossing - and in Liverpool the portly apostle heartily embraced the missionaries. Among them, office printer Joseph Bull looked over Orson's "New Theory of the Universe" and generously offered to issue it at no charge for his services. With free labor and printing press, Orson still had to struggle for the "60 or 70 dollars" it would cost to provide paper and a few mathematical type, but soon the mission office typesetter was at work. While Orson negotiated around Liverpool and London to have "electroplates" made of the revised scripture, he watched with anxiety as his "new theory" came off the rollers. He had no illusions of upsetting the scientific world with his proposals, but the little pamphlet symbolized for him a final demonstration of the Mormon hypothesis of creation: "I shall try to raise enough means, so that I can accept bro. Bull's kind and generous offer, and thus be enabled to distribute a few hundred copies among the Universities, Colleges, Acadymies, and the great mathematicians of both Europe and America. I do not expect that such a work would sell, excepting now and then a copy. But my object is not speculation, but to preserve the mathematical propositions which cost me so much time and labor to discover, from falling into oblivion. 0. Pratt Sen." 35 The three or four hundred copies of this work did go essentially unnoticed, although it deals with questions of general scientific interest in his day and shows beyond doubt great competence in the analytical |