hem in great quantities; but they told
him it wouldn't work, and the poor humbug finally, instead of casting
them into hell, paid them a quarter of a dollar apiece to let him off.
When he was about to leave Folger's house, some roguish young men of
Sing Sing forged a warrant, and with a counterfeit officer seized the
humbug, and a second time shaved him by force. He was one day terribly
"set back" as the phrase is, by a sharpish answer. He gravely asserted
to a certain man that he had been on the earth eighteen hundred years.
His hearer, startled and irreverent, exclaimed:

"The devil you have! Do you tell me so?"

"I do," said the prophet.

"Then," rejoined the other, "all I have to say is, you are a remarkably
good-looking fellow for one of your age."

The confounded prophet grinned, scowled, and exclaimed indignantly:

"You are a devil, Sir!" and marched off.

In the beginning of August, 1834, the unhappy Pierson died in Folger's
house, under circumstances amounting to strong circumstantial evidence
that Matthias, with the help of the colored cook, an enthusiastic
disciple, had poisoned him with arsenic. The rascal pretended that his
own curse had slain Pierson. There was a post mortem, an indictment, and
a trial, but the evidence was not strong enough for conviction. Being
acquitted, he was at once tried again for an assault and battery on his
daughter by the aforesaid whippings; and on this charge he was found
guilty and sent to the county jail for three months, in April, 1835. The
trial for murder was just before--the prophet having lain in prison
since his apprehension for murder in the preceding autumn. Mr. Folger's
delusion had pretty much disappeared by the end of the summer of 1834.
He had now become ruined, partly in consequence of foolish speculations
jointly with Pierson, believed to be conducted under Divine guidance,
and partly because his strange conduct destroyed his business reputation
and standing. The death of Pierson, and some very queer matters about
another apparent poisoning-trick, awakened the suspicions of the
Folgers; and after a good deal of scolding and trouble with the
impostor, who hung on to his comfortable home like a good fellow, Folger
finally turned him out, and then had him taken up for swindling. He had
been too foolish himself, however, to maintain this charge; but, shortly
after, the others, for murder and assault, followed, with a little
better success.

This imprisonmen