t seems to have put a sudden and final period to the
prophetical and religious operations of Master Matthias, and to the
follies of his victims, too. I know of no subsequent developments of
either kind. Matthias disappears from public life, and died, it is said,
in Arkansas; but when, or after what further career, I don't know. He
was a shallow knave, and undoubtedly also partly crazy and partly the
dupe of his own nonsense. If he had not so opportunely found victims of
good standing, he would not have been remembered at all, except as
George Munday, the "hatless prophet," and "Angel Gabriel Orr," are
remembered--as one more obscure, crazy street-preacher. And as soon as
his accidental supports of other people's money and enthusiasm failed
him, he disappeared at once. Many of my readers will remember
distinctly, as I do, the remarkable career of this man, and the
humiliating position in which his victims were placed. In the face of
such an exposition as this of the weakness and credulity of poor human
nature in this enlightened country of common schools and colleges, in
the boasted wide-awake nineteenth century, who shall deny that we can
study with interest and profit the history of impositions which have
been practiced upon mankind in every possible phase throughout every age
of the world, including the age in which we live? There is literally no
end to these humbugs; and the reader of these pages, weak as may be my
attempts to do the subject justice, will learn that there is no country,
no period, and no sphere in life which has not been impiously invaded
by the genius of humbug, under more disguises and in more shapes than it
has entered into the heart of man to conceive.

CHAPTER XLV.

A RELIGIOUS HUMBUG ON JOHN BULL.--JOANNA SOUTHCOTT.--THE SECOND SHILOH.

Joanna Southcott was born at St. Mary's Ottery in Devonshire, about the
year 1750. She was a plain, stout-limbed, hard-fisted farmer lass, whose
toils in the field--for her father was in but very moderate
circumstances--had tawned her complexion and hardened her muscles, at an
early age. As she grew toward woman's estate, necessity compelled her to
leave her home and seek service in the city of Exeter, where for many
years, she plodded on very quietly in her obscure path, first, as a
domestic hireling, and subsequently as a washer woman.

I have an old and esteemed friend on Staten Island whose father, still
living, recollects Joanna well, as she used