and obeyed the scamp with an implicitness and
prostrate humility even more melancholy than absurd, both as to
housekeeping and as to the ceremonies, washing of feet, etc., which he
enjoined. When he was angry with his female disciples, he frequently
whipped them; but, being a monstrous coward, he never tried it on a man.
The least opposition or contradiction threw him into a great rage, and
set him screaming, and cursing, and gesticulating like any street drab.
When he wished more clothes, which was pretty often, one of his dupes
furnished the money. When he wanted cash for any purpose indeed, they
gave it him.

This half-crazy knave and abominable humbug was Robert Matthews, who
called himself Matthias. He was of Scotch descent, and born about 1790,
in Washington county, New York; and his blood was tainted with insanity,
for a brother of his died a lunatic. He was a carpenter and joiner of
uncommon skill, and up to nearly his fortieth year lived, on the whole,
a useful and respectable life, being industrious, a professing Christian
of good standing, and (having married in 1813) a steady family-man. In
1828 and 1829, while living at Albany, he gradually became excited about
religious subjects; his first morbid symptoms appearing after hearing
some sermons by Rev. E. N. Kirk, and Mr. Finney the revivalist. He soon
began to exhort his fellow-journeymen instead of minding his work, so
uproariously that his employer turned him away.

He discovered a text in the Bible that forbid Christians to shave. He
let his hair and beard grow; began street-preaching in a noisy, brawling
style; announced that he was going to set about converting the whole
city of Albany--which needed it badly enough, if we may believe the
political gentlemen. Finding however, that the Lobby, or the Regency,
or something or other about the peculiar wickedness of Albany, was
altogether too much for him, he began, like Jonah at Nineveh, to
announce the destruction of the obstinate town; and at midnight, one
night in June, 1826, he waked up his household, and saying that Albany
was to be destroyed next day, took his three little boys--two, four, and
six years old--his wife and oldest child (a daughter refusing to go,)
and "fled to the mountains." He actually walked the poor little fellows
forty miles in twenty-four hours, to his sister's in Washington county.
Here he was reckoned raving crazy; was forcibly turned out of church for
one of his brawling inter