[The following constitutes the substantive interview text from the 18 March 1884 dispatch by James H. Hart describing his 10 March 1884 conversation with David Whitmer at Richmond, Missouri. This same dispatch was printed by the Bear Lake Democrat on 28 March 1884.]
"In regard to the translation," said Mr. Whitmer, "it was a laborious work, for the weather was very warm, and the days were long, and they worked from morning till night. But they were both young and strong and were soon able to complete the work.
"The way it was done was thus: Joseph would place the seer-stone in a deep hat, and placing his face close to it, would see, not the stone, but what appeared like an oblong piece of parchment, on which the hieroglyphics would appear, and also the translation in the English language, all appearing in bright luminous letters. Joseph would then read it to Oliver, who would write it down as spoken. Sometimes Joseph could not pronounce the words correctly, having had but little education; and if by any means a mistake was made in the copy, the luminous writing would remain until it was corrected. It sometimes took Oliver several trials to get the right letters to spell correctly some of the more difficult words, but when he had written them correctly, the characters and the interpretation would disappear, and be replaced by other characters and their interpretation.
"When the seer-stone was not placed in the hat, no characters or writing could be seen therein, but when so placed then the hieroglyphics would appear as before described. Some represented but one word, or name, some represented several, and some from one to two lines.
"Emma, Joseph's wife, came to my father's house a short time after Joseph and Oliver came, and she wrote a little of the translation, my brother Christian wrote some, but Oliver wrote the greater portion of it."
[On viewing the manuscript:] I remarked that [the manuscript] looked very much as though it was the original copy, and it would in fact take considerable more evidence than I had seen to convince me that it was not the original and only written copy. Mr. Whitmer said, "I know, positively, that it is so."
[On Joseph Smith's visionary knowledge of Whitmer's journey to fetch him from Harmony:] [Whitmer] could not remember the names of the hotels at which he stayed, and that on the way back to Fayette, "[Whitmer] pointed out the several houses where [he] had stopped, when he [Cowdery] took out his book and found them to correspond even to the names on the sign boards, all of which he had written before [they] met."
[On the disposition of the young men of Manchester toward Joseph Smith:] [The young men, who were about Joseph's age,] believed he had the plates and "were very angry" because he "had not given them any [of the plates] as he had promised."