the warm weather, and in winter he wore cast-off shoes; when
he could get none and the ways were very rough he protected his feet
with rude sandals of his own making. His hats were of his own making
too, and were usually of pasteboard with a broad brim in front to shield
his eyes from the sun; but otherwise he dressed in the second-hand
clothing of others, for he thought it wrong to spend upon the vanities
of dress. He dwelt close to the heart of nature, whose dumb children he
would not wound or kill, even poisonous snakes or noxious insects. The
Indians knew him and loved him for the goodness of his life, and they
honored him for the courage with which he bore the pain he never would
inflict. He could drive pins into his flesh without wincing; if he got
hurt he burned the place, and then treated it as a burn; he bore himself
in all things, to their thinking, far above other white men.

It was believed that he had come into the backwoods to forget a
disappointment in love, but there is no proof that he had ever suffered
this. What is certain is that he was a man of beautiful qualities of
heart and mind, who could at times be divinely eloquent about the work
he had chosen to do in this world. He was a believer in the philosophy
of Emanuel Swedenborg; he carried books of that doctrine in his bosom,
and constantly read them, or shared them with those who cared to know
it, even to tearing a volume in two. If his belief was true and we are
in this world surrounded by spirits, evil or good, which our evil or
good behavior invites to be of our company, then this harmless, loving,
uncouth, half-crazy man walked daily with the angels of God.

In those early days when the people were poor and ignorant, and had
little hope of bettering themselves in this world, their thoughts
turned much to the other world. The country was often swept by storms of
religious excitement; at the camp-meetings the devout fell in fits and
trances or were convulsed with strange throes called the jerks, and all
sorts of superstitions grew up easily among them. The wildest of these
perhaps was that of the Leatherwood God which flourished in Guernsey
County, about the year 1828. The name of this fanatic or impostor, who
was indeed both one and the other, was Joseph C. Dylks, and his title
was given him because of his claim to be the Supreme Being, and because
he first appeared to his worshipers on Leather-wood Creek at the town
of Salesville. The leatherw