silk sash
worked with gold and with twelve tassels, for the twelve tribes of
Israel. On his head was a steeple-crowned patent-leather shining black
cap with a shade.

Thus bedizened, this fantastic-looking personage marched gravely up and
down, or rode in pomp in the streets. Sometimes he lounged in a
bookstore or other place of semi-public resort; and in such places he
often preached or exhorted. His preachments were sufficiently horrible.
He claimed to be God the Father; and his doctrine was, in substance,
this:--"The true kingdom of God on earth began in Albany in June 1830,
and will be completed in twenty-one years, or by 1851. During this time,
wars are to stop, and I, Matthias, am to execute the divine judgments
and destroy the wicked. The day of grace is to close on December 1,
1836; and all who do not begin to reform by that time, I shall kill."
The discourses by which this blasphemous humbug supported his
pretensions were a hodge-podge of impiety and utter nonsense, with
rants, curses and cries, and frightful threats against all objectors.
Here is a passage from one;--"All who eat swine's flesh are of the
devil; and just as certain as he eats it he will tell a lie in less than
half an hour. If you eat a piece of pork, it will go crooked through
you, and the Holy Ghost will not stay in you; but one or the other must
leave the house pretty soon. The pork will be as crooked in you as rams'
horns." Again, he made these pleasant points about the ladies: "They who
teach women are of the wicked. All females who lecture their husbands
their sentence is: 'Depart, ye wicked, I know you not.' Everything that
has the smell of woman will be destroyed. Woman is the cap-sheaf of the
abomination of desolation, full of all deviltry." There, ladies! Is
anything further necessary to convince you what a peculiarly wicked and
horrible humbug this fellow was?

If we had followed this impostor home, we should have found him lodged,
during most of his stay in New-York city, with one or the other of his
three chief disciples. These were Pierson, who commonly attended him
abroad, Folger, and--for a time only--Mills. All three of these men were
wealthy merchants. In their handsome and luxuriously-furnished homes,
this noxious humbug occupied the best rooms, and controlled the whole
establishment, directing the marketing, meal times, and all other
household-matters. Master, mistress (in Mr. Folger's home,) and
domestics were disciples,