lent death in less than eighteen months. Another
said he foresaw me lying on my death-bed, with Satan sitting on my
breast, ready to carry away my soul to eternal torments. One sent me a
number of my pamphlets blotted and torn, packed up with a piece of wood,
for the carriage of which I was charged from four to five shillings.
Another sent me a number of my publications defaced in another way,
with offensive enclosures that do not admit of description.

At one time it was reported that I had died suddenly at Leeds. "After
lecturing there one night," the story said, "a certain person got upon
the platform to oppose me, and I was so frightened, that I first turned
pale, then fainted, and in two hours breathed my last." I was preaching
at Penrith, in Cumberland, some seventy or eighty miles away, at the
time I was said to have died at Leeds.

Some weeks later it was rumored that I had destroyed myself at Otley.
The maker of the tale in this case had been very particular, and given
his story the appearance of great truthfulness. He said I had gone to
lecture at Otley, and on my arrival there, was found to be more than
usually thoughtful and depressed. I lectured with my usual freedom and
power, but seemed oppressed with some mysterious sorrow. After the
lecture, instead of going along with my host, I unaccountably
disappeared, and though my friends sought for me and inquired for me all
about the town, I was nowhere to be found. In the morning, as the son of
my host was seeking for some cows in a wood on the side of the Chevin,
he found me dead and cold, with my throat cut, and the razor in my hand
with which I had done the deadly deed. The news soon spread, and my body
was taken back to Otley, where an inquest was held. The verdict was that
I had died by my own hand, in a fit of temporary insanity.

These stories were printed and published, and circulated through the
whole country. They were shouted aloud in the street opposite my own
door, in the hearing of my wife and family, during my absence. At first
my wife and children were terribly alarmed when they heard men crying,
"The melancholy death of Mr. Joseph Barker." But they got so used to me
dying and destroying myself in time, that they took such matters more
calmly, especially as I always came again, and appeared no worse for the
terrible deaths through which I had been made to pass.

For a year or two my enemies published a periodical called _The Beacon_,
every pa