CHAP. V.j MILLERITE MOVEMENT. 75 



call a flat or dead season. The emotions are so strong as to 

 exhaust both the body and mind ; and it is creditable to the New 

 England clergy of all sects, that they have in general, of late 

 years, almost entirely discontinued such meetings. 



At the Franconia hotel I first heard of the recent fanatical 

 movement of the Millerites, or followers of one Miller, who taught 

 that the millennium, or final destruction of the world, would 

 come to pass last year, or on the 23d day of October, 1844. A 

 farmer from the village of Lisbon told me that, in the course of 

 the preceding autumn, many of his neighbors would neither reap 

 their harvest of Indian corn and potatoes, nor let others take in 

 the crop, saying it was tempting Providence to store up grain for 

 a season that could never arrive, the great catastrophe being so 

 near at hand. These infatuated people, however, exerted them 

 selves very diligently to save what remained of their property 

 when the non-fulfillment of the prophecy dispelled their delusion. 

 In several townships in this and the adjoining States, the parochial 

 officers, or &quot; select men,&quot; interfered, harvesting the crops at the 

 public expense, and requiring the owners, after the 23d October, 

 to repay them for the outlay. 



I afterward heard many anecdotes respecting the Millerite 

 movement, not a few of my informants speaking with marked 

 indulgence of what they regarded simply as a miscalculation of 

 a prophecy which must be accomplished at no distant date. In 

 the township of Concord, New Hampshire, I was told of an old 

 woman, who, on paying her annual rent ibr a house, said, &quot; I guess 

 this is the last rent you will get from me.&quot; Her landlord re 

 marked, &quot; If so, I hope you have got your robes ready ;&quot; alluding 

 to the common practice of the faithful to prepare white ascension 

 robes, &quot; for going up into heaven.&quot; Hearing that there had been 

 advertisements from shops in Boston and elsewhere to furnish 

 any number of these robes on the shortest notice, I took for grant 

 ed that they were meant as a hoax ; but an English bookseller, 

 residing at New York, assured me that there was a brisk de 

 mand for such articles, even as far south as Philadelphia, and 

 that he knew two individuals in New York, who sat up all night 

 in their shrouds on the 22d of October. 



