The abridger and the margins
Page 56MORMON / CHAPTER 1
The abridger and the margins
Mormon receives more records than any reader can comfortably carry; omission is acknowledged; the margins become hospitable to another account.
Passage actions
A companion plate for this reading.
Passage actions
1 I, Mormon, gathered the records, and found that every keeper had written enough to delay the next keeper’s breakfast.
Passage actions
2 There were large plates, small plates, letters, names, genealogies, and an account of a meeting which ought to have been concluded before the third plate.
Passage actions
3 And I shit you not, I could not place the whole of their lives into the whole of my hands.
Passage actions
4 Therefore I selected.
Passage actions
5 A reader said: Then thy record is a point of view.
Passage actions
6 Mormon answered: Yes; I was unable to obtain a view from nowhere.
Passage actions
7 The reader asked whether this made the record worthless.
Passage actions
8 Nay, said Mormon. It maketh it a record whose decisions should remain available for examination.
Passage actions
9 He preserved accounts of kindness without hiding the occasions upon which a kind person had been mistaken.