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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Seven Wives and Seven Prisons, by L.A. Abbott
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Seven Wives and Seven Prisons
+
+Author: L.A. Abbott
+
+Release Date: November, 2003  [Etext #4667]
+Posting Date: January 27, 2010
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SEVEN WIVES AND SEVEN PRISONS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Aldarondo
+
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN WIVES AND SEVEN PRISONS
+
+Or Experiences In The Life Of A Matrimonial Maniac. A True Story.
+Written By Himself.
+
+
+By L.A. Abbott
+
+
+New York:
+
+Published For The Author. 1870.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER 1. THE FIRST AND WORST WIFE My Early History. The First
+Marriage. Leaving Home to Prospect. Sending for My Wife. Her Mysterious
+Journey. Where I Found Her. Ten Dollars for Nothing. A Fascinating Hotel
+Clerk. My Wife's Confession. From Bad to Worse. Final Separation. Trial
+for Forgery. A Private Marriage. Summary Separation.
+
+CHAPTER II. MISERIES FROM MY SECOND MARRIAGE. Love-Making in
+Massachusetts. Arrest for Bigamy. Trial at Northampton. A Stunning
+Sentence. Sent to State Prison. Learning the Brush Business. Sharpening
+Picks. Prison Fare. In the Hospital. Kind Treatment. Successful
+Horse-Shoeing. The Warden my Friend. Efforts for my Release. A Full
+Pardon.
+
+CHAPTER III. THE SCHEIMER SENSATION. The Scheimer Family. In Love
+With Sarah. Attempt to Elope. How it was Prevented. Second Attempt. A
+Midnight Expedition. The Alarm. A Frightful Beating. Escape, Flogging
+the Devil out of Sarah. Return to New Jersey. "Boston Yankee." Plans to
+Secure Sarah.
+
+CHAPTER IV. SUCCESS WITH SARAH. Mary Smith as a Confederate. The Plot.
+Waiting in the Woods. The Spy Outwitted. Sarah Secured. The Pursuers
+Baffled. Night on the Road. Efforts to Get Married. "The Old Offender."
+Married at Last. A Constable after Sarah. He Gives it Up. An Ale Orgie.
+Return to "Boston Yankee's." A Home in Goshen.
+
+CHAPTER V. HOW THE SCHEIMERS MADE ME SUFFER. Return to Scheimer's.
+Peace, and then Pandemonium. Frightful Family Row. Running for Refuge.
+The Gang Again. Arrest at Midnight. Struggle with my Captors. In Jail
+Once More. Put in Irons. A Horrible Prison. Breaking Out. The Dungeon.
+Sarah's Baby.. Curious Compromises. Old Scheimer my Jailer. Signing a
+Bond. Free Again. Last Words from Sarah.
+
+CHAPTER VI. FREE LIFE AND FISHING. Taking Care of Crazy Men. Carrying
+off a Boy. Arrested for Stealing my Own Horse and Buggy. Fishing in Lake
+Winnepisiogee. An Odd Landlord. A Woman as Big as a Hogshead. Reducing
+the Hogshead to a Barrel. Wonderful Verification of a Dream. Successful
+Medical Practice. A Busy Winter in New Hampshire. Blandishments of
+Captain Brown. I go to Newark, New Jersey.
+
+CHAPTER VII. WEDDING A WIDOW AND THE CONSEQUENCES. I Marry a Widow.
+Six Weeks of Happiness. Confiding a Secret, and the Consequences. The
+Widow's Brother. Sudden Flight from Newark. In Hartford, Conn. My
+Wife's Sister Betrays Me. Trial for Bigamy. Sentenced to Ten Years'
+Imprisonment. I Become a "Bobbin Boy." A Good Friend. Governor Price
+Visits me in Prison. He Pardons Me. Ten Years' Sentence Fulfilled in
+Seven Months.
+
+CHAPTER VIII. ON THE KEEN SCENT. Good Resolutions. Enjoying Freedom.
+Going After a Crazy Man. The Old Tempter in a New Form. Mary Gordon.
+My New "Cousin." Engaged Again. Visit to the Old Folks at Home. Another
+Marriage. Starting for Ohio. Change of Plans. Domestic Quarrels.
+Unpleasant Stories about Mary. Bound Over to Keep the Peace. Another
+Arrest for Bigamy. A Sudden Flight. Secreted Three Weeks in a Farm
+House. Recaptured at Concord. Escaped Once More. Traveling on the
+Underground Railroad. In Canada.
+
+CHAPTER IX. MARRYING TWO MILLINERS. Back in Vermont. Fresh Temptations.
+Margaret Bradley. Wine and Women. A Mock Marriage in Troy. The False
+Certificate. Medicine and Millinery. Eliza Gurnsey. A Spree at Saratoga.
+Marrying Another Milliner. Again Arrested for Bigamy. In Jail Eleven
+Months. A Tedious Trial. Found Guilty. Appeal to Supreme Court. Trying
+to Break Out of Jail. A Governor's Promise. Second Trial. Sentenced to
+Three Years' Imprisonment.
+
+CHAPTER X. PRISON LIFE IN VERMONT. Entering Prison. The Scythe Snath
+Business. Blistered Hands. I Learn Nothing. Threaten to Kill the Shop
+Keeper. Locksmithing. Open Rebellion. Six Weeks in the Dungeon. Escape
+of a Prisoner. In the Dungeon Again. The Mad Man Hall. He Attempts
+to Murder the Deputy. I Save Morey's Life. Howling in the Black Hole.
+Taking Off Hall's Irons. A Ghastly Spectacle. A Prison Funeral. I am Let
+Alone. The Full Term of my Imprisonment.
+
+CHAPTER XI. ON THE TRAMP. The Day of my Deliverance. Out of Clothes.
+Sharing with a Beggar. A Good Friend. Tramping Through the Snow. Weary
+Walks. Trusting to Luck. Comfort at Concord. At Meredith Bridge. The
+Blaisdells. Last of the "Blossom" Business. Making Money at Portsmouth.
+Revisiting Windsor. An Astonished Warden. Making Friends of Enemies.
+Inspecting the Prison. Going to Port Jervis.
+
+CHAPTER XII. ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP SARAH SCHEIMER'S BOY. Starting to See
+Sarah. The Long Separation. What I Learned About Her. Her Drunken
+Husband. Change of Plan. A Suddenly-Formed Scheme. I Find Sarah's Son.
+The First Interview. Resolve to Kidnap the Boy. Remonstrance of my Son
+Henry. The Attempt. A Desperate Struggle. The Rescue. Arrest of Henry.
+My Flight into Pennsylvania. Sending Assistance to my Son. Return to
+Port Jervis. Bailing Henry. His Return to Belvidere. He is Bound Over to
+be Tried for Kidnapping. My folly.
+
+CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER WIDOW. Waiting for the Verdict. My Son Sent to
+State Prison. What Sarah Would Have Done. Interview with my First Wife.
+Help for Henry. The Biddeford Widow. Her Effort to Marry Me. Our Visit
+to Boston. A Warning. A Generous Gift. Henry Pardoned. Close of the
+Scheimer Account. Visit to Ontario County. My Rich Cousins. What Might
+Have Been. My Birthplace Revisited.
+
+CHAPTER XIV. MY SON TRIES TO MURDER ME. Settling Down in Maine. Henry's
+Health. Tour Through the South. Secession Times. December in New
+Orleans. Up the Mississippi. Leaving Henry in Massachusetts. Back in
+Maine Again. Return to Boston, Profitable Horse-Trading. Plenty of
+Money. My First Wife's Children. How they Have Been Brought Up. A
+Barefaced Robbery. Attempt to Blackmail Me. My Son Tries to Rob and Kill
+Me. My Rescue Last of the Young Man.
+
+CHAPTER XV. A TRUE WIFE AND HOME AT LAST. Where Were All my Wives? Sense
+of Security. An Imprudent Acquaintance. Moving from Maine. My Property
+in Rensselaer County. How I Lived. Selling a Recipe. About Buying a
+Carpet. Nineteen Lawsuits. Sudden Departure for the West. A Vagabond
+Life for Two Years. Life in California. Return to the East. Divorce from
+any First Wife. A Genuine Marriage. My Farm. Home at Last.
+
+
+
+
+SEVEN WIVES AND SEVEN PRISONS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I. THE FIRST AND WORST WIFE
+
+My Early History--THE FIRST MARRIAGE--LEAVING HOME TO PROSPECT--SENDING
+FOR MY WIFE--HER MYSTERIOUS JOURNEY--WHERE I FOUND HER--TEN DOLLARS FOR
+NOTHING--A FASCINATING HOTEL CLERK--MY WIFE'S CONFESSION--FROM BAD TO
+WORSE--FINAL SEPARATION--TRIAL FOR FORGERY--A PRIVATE MARRIAGE--SUMMARY
+SEPARATION.
+
+
+
+SOME one has said that if any man would faithfully write his
+autobiography, giving truly his own history and experiences, the ills
+and joys, the haps and mishaps that had fallen to his lot, he could not
+fail to make an interesting story; and Disraeli makes Sidonia say
+that there is romance in every life. How much romance, as well as sad
+reality, there is in the life of a man who, among other experiences,
+has married seven wives, and has been seven times in prison--solely on
+account of the seven wives, may be learned from the pages that follow.
+
+I was born in the town of Chatham, Columbia County, New York, in
+September, 1813. My father was a New Englander, who married three times,
+and I was the eldest son of his third wife, a woman of Dutch descent,
+or, as she would have boosted if she had been rich, one of the
+old Knickerbockers of New York. My parents were simply honest,
+hard--working, worthy people, who earned a good livelihood, brought up
+their children to work, behaved themselves, and were respected by their
+neighbors. They had a homestead and a small farm of thirty acres, and on
+the place was a blacksmith shop in which my father worked daily, shoeing
+horses and cattle for farmers and others who came to the shop from miles
+around.
+
+There were three young boys of us at home, and we had a chance to go to
+school in the winter, while during the summer we worked on the little
+farm and did the "chores" about the house and barn. But by the time I
+was twelve years old I began to blow and strike in the blacksmith
+shop, and when I was sixteen years old I could shoe horses well, and
+considered myself master of the trade. At the age of eighteen, I went
+into business with my father, and as I was now entitled to a share
+of the profits, I married the daughter of a well-to-do neighboring
+farmer, and we began our new life in part of my father's house, setting
+up for ourselves, and doing our own house-keeping.
+
+I ought to have known then that marrying thus early in life, and
+especially marrying the woman I did, was about the most foolish thing
+I could do. I found it out afterwards, and was frequently and painfully
+reminded of it through many long years. But all seemed bright enough
+at the start. My wife was a good-looking woman of just my own age; her
+family was most respectable; two of her brothers subsequently became
+ministers of the gospel; and all the children had been carefully brought
+up. I was thought to have made a good match; but a few years developed
+that had wedded a most unworthy woman.
+
+Seventeen months after our marriage, our oldest child, Henry, was born.
+Meanwhile we had gone to Sidney, Delaware County, where my father opened
+a shop. I still continued in business with him, and during our stay at
+Sidney, my daughter, Elizabeth, was born. From Sidney, my father wanted
+to go to Bainbridge, Chenango, County, N.Y., and I went with him,
+leaving my wife and the children at Sidney, while we prospected. As
+usual my father started a blacksmith-shop; but I bought a hundred acres
+of timber land, went to lumbering, and made money. We had a house about
+four miles from the village, I living with my father, and as soon as
+found out that we were doing well in business, I sent to Sidney for
+my wife and children. They were to come by stage, and were due, after
+passing through Bainbridge, at our house at four o'clock in the morning.
+We were up early to meet the stage; but when it arrived, the driver told
+us that my wife had stopped at the public house in Bainbridge.
+
+Wondering what this could mean, I at once set out with my brother and
+walked over to the village. It was daylight when we arrived, and knocked
+loudly at the public house door. After considerable delay, the clerk
+came to the door and let us in. He also asked as to "take something,"
+which we did. The clerk knew us well, and I inquired if my wife was in
+the house; he said she was, told us what room she was in, and we went up
+stairs and found her in bed with her children. Waking her, I asked her
+why she did not come home, in the stage? She replied that the clerk down
+stairs told her that the stage did not go beyond the house, and that she
+expected to walk over, as soon as it was daylight, or that possibly we
+might come for her.
+
+I declare, I was so young and unsophisticated that I suspected nothing,
+and blamed only the stupidity, as I supposed, of the clerk in telling
+her that the stage did not go beyond Bainbridge. My wife got up and
+dressed herself and the children, and then as it was broad daylight,
+after endeavoring, ineffectually, to get a conveyance, we started for
+home on foot, she leading the little boy, and I carrying the youngest
+child. We were not far on our way when she suddenly stopped, stooped
+down, and exclaimed:
+
+"O! see what I have found in the road."
+
+And she showed me a ten dollar bill. I was quite surprised, and
+verdantly enough, advised looking around for more money, which my wife,
+brother and I industriously did for some minutes. It was full four weeks
+before I found out where that ten dollar bill came from. Meanwhile, my
+wife was received and was living in her new home, being treated with
+great kindness by all of us. It was evident, however, that she had
+something on her mind which troubled her, and one morning, about a
+month after her arrival, I found her in tears. I asked her what was the
+matter? She said that she had been deceiving me; that she did not pick
+up the ten dollar bill in the road; but that it was given to her by the
+clerk in the public house in Bainbridge; only, however, for this: he
+had grossly insulted her; she had resented it, and he had given her the
+money, partly as a reparation, and partly to prevent her from speaking
+of the insult to me or to others.
+
+But by this time my hitherto blinded eyes were opened, and I charged
+her with being false to me. She protested she had not been; but finally
+confessed that she had been too intimate with the clerk at the hotel.
+I began a suit at law against the clerk; but finally, on account of my
+wife's family and for the sake of my children, I stopped proceedings,
+the clerk paying the costs of the suit as far as it had gone, and giving
+me what I should probably have got from him in the way of damages. My
+wife too, was apparently so penitent, and I was so much infatuated with
+her, that I forgave her, and even consented to continue to live with
+her. But I removed to Greenville, Greene County, N. Y., where I went
+into the black-smithing business, and was very successful. We lived
+here long enough to add two children to our little family; but as time
+went on, the woman became bad again, and displayed the worst depravity.
+I could no longer live with her, and we finally mutually agreed upon
+a life-long separation--she insisting upon keeping the children, and
+going to Rochester where she subsequently developed the full extent of
+her character.
+
+This, as nearly as I remember, was in the year 1838, and with this came
+a new trouble upon me. Just before the separation, I received from my
+brother's wife a note for one hundred dollars, and sold it. It proved to
+be a forgery. I was temporarily in Troy, N. Y., when the discovery
+was made, and as I made no secret of my whereabouts at any time, I was
+followed to Troy, was there arrested, and after lying in jail at Albany
+one night, was taken next morning to Coxsackie, Greene County, and front
+thence to Catskill. After one day in jail there, I was brought before a
+justice and examined on the charge of uttering a forged note. There was
+a most exciting trial of four days duration. I had two good lawyers who
+did their best to show that I did not know the note to be forged when
+I sold it, but the justice seemed determined to bind me over for
+trial, and he did so, putting me under five hundred dollars' bonds. My
+half-sister at Sidney was sent for, came to Catskill, and became bail
+for me. I was released, and my lawyers advised me to leave, which I did
+at once, and went to Pittsfield, and from there to Worthington,
+Mass., where I had another half-sister, who was married to Mr. Josiah
+Bartlett, and was well off.
+
+Here I settled down, for all that I knew to the contrary, for life. For
+some years past, I had devoted my leisure hours from the forge to
+the honest endeavor to make up for the deficiencies in my youthful
+education, and had acquired, among other things, a good knowledge
+of medicine. I did not however, believe in any of the "schools"
+particularly those schools that make use of mineral medicines in
+their practice. I favored purely vegetable remedies, and had been very
+successful in administering them. So I began life anew, in Worthington,
+as a Doctor, and aided by my half-sister and her friends, I soon
+secured a remunerative practice.
+
+I was beginning to be truly happy. I supposed that the final separation,
+mutually agreed upon between my wife and myself, was as effectual as all
+the courts in the country could make it, and I looked upon myself as
+a free man. Accordingly, after I had been in Worthington some months I
+began to pay attentions to the daughter of a flourishing farmer. She was
+a fine girl; she received my addresses favorably, and we were finally
+privately married. This was the beginning of my life-long troubles. In
+a few weeks her father found out that I had been previously married, and
+was not, so far as he knew, either a divorced man or a widower. And
+so it happened, that one day when I was at his house, and with his
+daughter, he suddenly came home with a posse of people and a warrant for
+my arrest. I was taken before a justice, and while we were waiting for
+proceedings to begin, or, possibly for the justice to arrive, I took the
+excited father aside and said:
+
+"You know I have a fine horse and buggy at the door. Get in with me, and
+ride down home. I will see your daughter and make everything right with
+her, and if you will let me run away, I'll give her her the horse and
+buggy."
+
+The offer was too tempting to be refused. The father had the warrant in
+his pocket, and he accepted my proposal. We rode to his house, and he
+went into the back-room by direction of his daughter while she and I
+talked in the hall. I explained matters as well as I could; I promised
+to see her again, and that very soon. My horse and buggy were at the
+door. Hastily bidding my new and young wife "good-bye," I sprang into
+the buggy and drove rapidly away. The father rushed to the door and
+raised a great hue and cry, and what was more, raised the neighbors; I
+had not driven five miles before all Worthington was after me. But I had
+the start, the best horse, and I led in the race. I drove to Hancock,
+N.Y., where my pursuers lost the trail; thence to Bennington, Vt., next
+to Brattleboro, Vt., and from there to Templeton, Mass. What befel me at
+Templeton, shall be related in the next chapter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II. MISERIES FROM MY SECOND MARRIAGE.
+
+LOVE-MAKING IN MASSACHUSETTS--ARREST FOR BIGAMY--TRIAL AT
+NORTHAMPTON--A STUNNING SENTENCE--SENT TO STATE PRISON--LEARNING THE
+BRUSH BUSINESS--SHARPENING PICKS--PRISON FARE--IN THE HOSPITAL--KIND
+TREATMENT--SUCCESSFUL HORSE SHOEING--THE WARDEN MY FRIEND--EFFORTS FOR
+MY RELEASE--A FULL PARDON.
+
+
+
+At Templeton I speedily made known my profession, and soon had a very
+good medical practice which one or two "remarkable cures" materially
+increased. I was doing well and making money. I boarded in a respectable
+farmer's family, and after living there about six months there came
+another most unhappy occurrence. From the day, almost, when I began
+to board with this farmer there sprung up a strong attachment between
+myself and his youngest daughter which soon ripened into mutual love.
+She rode about with me when I went to see my patients, who were getting
+to be numerous, and we were much in each other's company.
+
+On one occasion she accompanied me to Worcester where I had some
+patients. We went to a public house where she and her family were well
+known, and when she was asked by the landlord how she happened to come
+there with the doctor, her prompt answer was:
+
+"Why, we are married; did'nt you know it?"
+
+She refused even to go to the table without my attendance, and when I
+was out visiting some patients, she waited for her meals till I came
+back. We stayed there but two days and returned together to Templeton.
+
+A month afterward her brother was in Worcester, and stopped at this
+house. The landlord, after some conversation about general matters,
+said:
+
+"So your sister is married to the Doctor?"
+
+"I know nothing about it," was the reply.
+
+This led to a full and altogether too free disclosure to the astonished
+brother about the particulars of our visit to the same house a month
+before, and his sister's representations that we were married. The
+brother immediately started for home, and repeated the story, as it was
+told to him, to his father and the family. Without seeing his daughter,
+the father at once procured a warrant, and had me arrested and brought
+before a justice on charge of seduction. The trial was brief; the
+daughter herself swore positively, that though she had been imprudent
+and indiscreet in going to Worcester with me, no improper communication
+had ever, there or elsewhere, taken place between us.
+
+Of course, there was nothing to do but to let me go and I was
+discharged. But out of this affair came the worst that had yet fallen
+to my lot in life. The story got into the papers, with particulars and
+names of the parties, and in this way the people at Worthington, who had
+chased me as far as Hancock and had there lost all trace of me, found
+out where I was. If I had been aware of it, they might have looked
+elsewhere for me; but while I was felicitating myself upon my escape
+from the latest difficulty, down came an officer from Worthington with a
+warrant for my arrest. This officer, the sheriff, was connected with the
+family into which I had married in Worthington, and with him came two or
+three more relatives, all bound, as they boasted, to "put me through."
+They were excessively irate against me and very much angered, especially
+that their race after me to Hancock had been fruitless. I had fallen
+into the worst possible hands.
+
+They took me to Northampton and brought me before a Justice, on a
+charge of bigamy: The sheriff who arrested me, and the relatives who
+accompanied him were willing to swear my life away, if they could, and
+the justice was ready enough to bind me over to take my trial in court,
+which was not to be in session for full six months to come. Those long,
+weary six months I passed in the county jail. Then came my trial. I had
+good counsel. There was not a particle of proof that I was guilty of
+bigamy; no attempt was made on the part of the prosecution to produce
+my first wife, from whom I had separated, or, indeed, to show that there
+was such a woman in existence. But, evidence or no evidence, with all
+Worthington against me, conviction was inevitable. The jury found me
+guilty. The judge promptly sentenced me to three years' imprisonment in
+the State Prison, at Charlestown, with hard labor, the first day to be
+passed in solitary confinement.
+
+This severe sentence fairly stunned me. I was taken back to jail, and
+the following day I was conveyed to Charlestown with heavy irons on my
+ankles and handcuffed. No murderer would have been more heavily ironed.
+We started early in the morning, and by noon I was duly delivered to
+the warden at Charlestown prison. I was taken into the office, measured,
+asked my name, age, and other particulars, and then if I had a trade. To
+this I at once answered, "no." I wanted my twenty-four hours'
+solitary confinement in which to reflect upon the kind of "hard labor,"
+prescribed in my sentence, I was willing to follow for the next three
+years; and I also wanted information about the branches of labor pursued
+in that prison. The next words of the warden assured me that he was a
+kind and compassionate man.
+
+"Go," he said to an officer, "and instantly take off those irons when
+you take him inside the prison."
+
+I was taken in and the irons were taken off. I was then undressed, my
+clothes were removed to another room, and I was redressed in the prison
+uniform. This was a grotesque uniform indeed. The suit was red and blue,
+half and half, like a harlequin's, and to crown all came a hat or cap,
+like a fool's cap, a foot and a half high and running up to a peak.
+Miserable as I was, I could scarcely help smiling at the utterly absurd
+appearance I knew I then presented. I even ventured to remark upon it;
+but was suddenly and sternly checked with the command:
+
+"Silence! There's no talking allowed here."
+
+Then began my twenty-four hours' solitary confinement, and twenty-four
+wretched hours they were. I had only bread and water to eat and drink,
+and I need not say that my unhappy thoughts would not permit me to
+sleep. At noon next day I was taken from my cell, and brought again
+before the warden, Mr. Robinson, who kindly said:
+
+"You have no trade, you say; what do you want to go to work at?"
+
+"Anything light; I am not used to hard labor," I replied.
+
+So the warden directed that I should be put at work in the brush shop,
+where all kinds of brushes were made. Mr. Eddy was the officer in charge
+of this shop, and Mr. Knowles, the contractor for the labor employed in
+the brush business, was present. Both of these gentlemen took pains to
+instruct me in the work I was to begin upon, and were very kind in their
+manner towards me. I went to work in a bungling way and with a sad and
+heavy heart. At 12 o'clock we were marched from the shop to our
+cells, each man taking from a trap in the wall, as he went by, his pan
+containing his dinner, which consisted, that day, of boiled beef and
+potatoes. It was probably the worst dinner I had ever eaten, but I had
+yet to learn what prison fare was. From one o'clock to six I was in the
+shop again; then came Supper--mush and molasses that evening which was
+varied, as I learned afterwards, on different days by rye bread,
+or Indian bread and rye coffee. These things were also served for
+breakfast, and the dinners were varied on different days in the week.
+The fare was very coarse, always, but abundant and wholesome. After
+supper prisoners were expected to go to bed, as they were called out at
+six o'clock in the morning.
+
+I stayed in the brush shop three or four months, but I made very little
+progress in learning the trade. I was willing enough to learn and did my
+best. From the day I entered the prison I made up my mind to behave as
+well as I could; to be docile and obedient, and to comply with every
+rule and order. Consequently I had no trouble, and the officers all
+treated me kindly. Warden Robinson was a model man for his position. He
+believed that prisoners could be reformed more easily by mild than by
+harsh measures--at least they would be more contented with their lot and
+would be subordinate. Every now and then he would ask prisoners if they
+were well treated by the officers; how they were getting on; if they had
+enough to eat, and so on. The officers seemed imbued with the warden's
+spirit; the chaplain of the prison, who conducted the Sunday, services
+and also held a Sunday school, was one of the finest men in the world,
+and took a personal interest in every prisoner. Altogether, it was
+a model institution. But in spite of good treatment I was intensely
+miserable; my mind was morbid; I was nearly, if not quite, insane; and
+one day during the dinner hour, I opened a vein in each arm in hopes
+that I should bleed to death. Bleed I did, till I fainted away, and as
+I did not come out when the other prisoners did, the officer came to
+my cell and discovered my condition. He at once sent for the Doctor who
+came and stopped the hemorrhage, and then sent me to the hospital where
+I remained two weeks.
+
+After I came out of the hospitals the Warden talked to me about my
+situation and feelings. He advised me to go into the blacksmith shop,
+of course not dreaming that I knew anything of the work; but he said I
+would have more liberty there; that the men moved about freely and could
+talk to each other; that the work mainly was sharpening picks and tools,
+and that I could at least blow and strike. So I went into the blacksmith
+shop, and remained their six weeks. But, debilitated as I was, the work
+was too hard for me, and so the warden put me in the yard to do what I
+could. I also swept the halls and assisted in the cook-room. One day
+when the warden spoke to me, I told him that I knew something about
+taking care of the sick, and after some conversation, he transferred me
+to the hospital as a nurse.
+
+Here, if there is such a things as contentment in prison, I was
+comparatively happy. I nursed the sick and administered medicines under
+direction of the doctor. I had too, with all easy position, more liberty
+than any other prisoner. I could go anywhere about the halls and yard,
+and in a few weeks I was frequently sent on an errand into the town.
+Everyone seemed to have the fullest confidence in me. The Warden talked
+to me whenever he saw me, and always had some kind word for me. One day
+I ventured to speak to him about his horse, of which he was very proud,
+and indeed the horse was a very fine one.
+
+Mr. Warden, said I "that's a noble horse of yours; but he interferes
+badly, and that is only because he is badly shod. If you will trust me,
+I can shoe him so as to prevent all that."
+
+"Can you?" exclaimed the Warden in great surprise; "Well, if you can,
+I'll give you a good piece of bread and butter, or, anything else you
+want."
+
+"I don't want your bread and butter," said I "but I will shoe your horse
+as he has never been shod before."
+
+"Well take the horse to the shop and see what you can do."
+
+Of course, I knew that by "bread and butter" the warden meant that if I
+could shoe his favorite horse so as to prevent him from interfering, he
+would gladly favor me as far as he could; and I knew, too, that I could
+make as good a shoe as any horse need wear. I gladly led the horse to
+the shop where I had so signally failed in pick and tool sharpening, and
+was received with jeers by my old comrades who wanted to know what I was
+going to do to that horse.
+
+"O, simply shoe him," I said.
+
+This greatly increased the mirth of my former shopmates; but their
+amusement speedily changed to amazement as they saw me make my nails,
+turn the shoes and neatly put them on. In due time the horse was shod,
+and I led him to the Warden for inspection; and before him and an
+officer who stood by him, I led the horse up and down to show that he
+did not interfere. The Warden's delight was unbounded; he never saw such
+a set of shoes; he declared that they fitted as if they had grown to the
+horse's hoofs. I need not say that from that day till the day I left the
+prison, I had everything I wanted from the Warden's own table; I fared
+as well as he did, and had favors innumerable.
+
+About once a month I shod that horse, little thinking that he was to
+carry me over my three years' imprisonment in just half that time. Yet
+so it was. For talking now almost daily, in the hospital or in the
+yard, with the Warden, he became interested in me, and in answer to his
+inquiries I told him the whole story of my persecution, as I considered
+it, my trial and my unjust and severe sentence. When he had heard all he
+said:
+
+"You ought not to be here another day; you ought to go out."
+
+The good chaplain also interested himself in my case, and after hearing
+the story, he and the Warden took a lawyer named Bemis, into their
+counsel, laid the whole matter before him and asked his opinion. Mr.
+Bemis, after hearing all the circumstances, expressed the belief that I
+might get a pardon. He entered into the matter with his whole heart. He
+sent for my son Henry and my first wife, and they came and corroborated
+my statement about the mutual agreement for separation, and told how
+long we had been parted. Mr. Bemis and they then went to Governor
+Briggs, and told him the story, and that I had served out half of
+my severe sentence, and pressed for a pardon. The Governor after due
+deliberation consented to their request. They came back to Charlestown
+with the joyful intelligence. Warden Robinson advised my son, that
+considering my present mental and physical condition, he had better
+break the intelligence gradually to me, and so Henry came to me and
+said, simply, that he thought he would soon have "good news" for me. The
+next day I was told that my pardon was certain. The day following, at 12
+o'clock, I walked out, after eighteen months' imprisonment, a free man.
+I was in the streets of Charlestown with my own clothes on and five
+dollars, given to me by the Warden, in my pocket, I was poor, truly, but
+I was at liberty, and that for the day was enough.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III. THE SCHEIMER SENSATION.
+
+THE SCHEIMER FAMILY--IN LOVE WITH SARAH--ATTEMPT TO ELOPE--HOW IT WAS
+PREVENTED--THE SECOND ATTEMPT--A MIDNIGHT EXPEDITION--THE ALARM--A
+FRIGHTFUL BEATING--ESCAPE--FLOGGING THE DEVIL OUT OF SARAH--WINTER IN
+NEW HAMPSHIRE--RETURN TO NEW JERSEY--"BOSTON YANKEE"--PLANS TO SECURE
+SARAH.
+
+
+
+I went at once to the Prisoners Home, where I was kindly received, and
+I stayed there two days. The superintendent then paid my passage to
+Pittsfield where I wished to go and meet my son. From Pittsfield I went
+to Albany, then New York, and from there to Newtown N. J. Here I went
+into practice, meeting with almost immediate success, and staid there
+two months. It was my habit to go from town to town to attend to cases
+of a certain class and to sell my vegetable preparations; and from
+Newtown I went to Belvidere, stopping at intermediate towns on the way,
+and from Belvidere I went to Harmony, a short distance below, to attend
+a case of white swelling, which I cured.
+
+Now just across the Delaware river, nine miles above Easton, Penn.,
+lived a wealthy Dutch farmer, named Scheimer, who heard of the cure
+I had effected in Harmony, and as he had a son, sixteen years of age,
+afflicted in the same way, he sent for me to come and see him. I crossed
+the river, saw the boy, and at Scheimer's request took up my residence
+with him to attend to the case. He was to give me, with my board, five
+hundred dollars if I cured the boy; but though the boy recovered under
+my treatment, I never received my fee for reasons which will appear
+anon. I secured some other practice in the neighborhood, and frequently
+visited Easton, Belvidere, Harmony, Oxford, and other near by places, on
+either side of the river.
+
+The Scheimer family consisted of the "old folks" and four sons and four
+daughters, the children grown up, for my patient, sixteen years old, was
+the youngest. The youngest daughter, Sarah, eighteen years old, was an
+accomplished and beautiful girl. Now it would seem as if with my
+sad experience I ought by this time, to have turned my back on women
+forever. But I think I was a monomaniac on the subject of matrimony.
+My first wife had so misused me that it was always in my mind that
+some reparation was due me, and that I was fairly entitled to a good
+helpmate. The ill-success of my efforts, hitherto, to secure one,
+and my consequent sufferings were all lost upon me--experience, bitter
+experience, had taught me nothing.
+
+I had not been in the Scheimer family three months before I fell in love
+with the daughter Sarah and she returned my passion. She promised to
+marry me, but said there was no use in saying anything to her parents
+about it; they would never consent on account of the disparity in
+our ages, for I was then forty years old; but she would marry me
+nevertheless, if we had to run away together. Meanwhile, the old
+folks had seen enough of our intimacy to suspect that it might lead to
+something yet closer, and one day Mr. Scheimer invited me to leave his
+house and not to return. I asked for one last interview with Sarah,
+which was accorded, and we then arranged a plan by which she should meet
+me the next afternoon at four o'clock at the Jersey ferry, a mile below
+the house, when we proposed to quietly cross over to Belvidere and get
+married. I then took leave of her and the family and went away.
+
+The next day, at the appointed time, I was at the ferry--Sarah, as I
+learned afterwards, left the house at a much earlier hour to "take a
+walk" and while she was, foolishly I think, making a circuitous route
+to reach the ferry, her father, who suspected that she intended to run
+away, went to the ferryman and told him his suspicions, directing him
+if Sarah came there by no means to permit her to cross the river.
+Consequently when Sarah met me at the ferry, the ferryman flatly refused
+to let either of us go over. He knew all about it, he said, and it was
+"no go." I had two hundred dollars in my pocket and I offered him any
+reasonable sum, if he would only let us cross; but no, he knew the
+Scheimers better than he knew me, and their goodwill was worth more
+than mine. Here was a block to the game, indeed. I had sent my baggage
+forward in the morning to Belvidere; Sarah had nothing but the clothes
+she wore, for she was so carefully watched that she could carry or send
+nothing away; but she was ready to go if the obstinate ferryman had not
+prevented us.
+
+While we were pressing the ferryman to favor us, down came one of
+Sarah's brothers with a dozen neighbors, and told her she must return
+home or he would carry her back by force. I interfered and said she
+should not go. Whereupon one fellow took hold of me and I promptly
+knocked him down, and notified the crowd that the first who laid hands
+on me, or who attempted to take her home violently, would get a dose
+from my pistol which I then exhibited:
+
+"Sarah must go willingly or not at all," said I.
+
+The production of my pistol, the only weapon in the crowd, brought about
+a new state of affairs, and the brother and others tried persuasion; but
+Sarah stoutly insisted that she would not return. "Now hold on," boys,
+said I, "I am going to say something to her." I then took her aside and
+told her that there was no use in trying to run away then; that she had
+better go home quietly, and tell the folks that she was sorry for what
+she had done, that she had broken off with me, and would have nothing
+more to do with me; that I would surely see her to-morrow, and then we
+could make a new plan. So she announced her willingness to go quietly
+home with her brother and she did so. I went to a public house half a
+mile below the ferry. That night the gang came down to this house with
+the intention of driving me away from the place, or, possibly, of doing
+something worse; but while they were howling outside, the landlord sent
+me to my room and then went out and told the crowd I had gone away.
+
+The next morning I boldly walked up to Scheimer's house to get a few
+books and other things I had left there, and I saw Sarah. I told her
+to be ready on the following Thursday night and I would have a ladder
+against her window for her to escape by. She promised to be ready.
+Meantime, though I had been in the house but a few minutes, some one who
+had seen me go in gathered the crowd of the day before, and the first
+thing I knew the house was beseiged. Mrs. Scheimer had gone up stairs
+for my things. I went out and faced the little mob. I was told to leave
+the place or they would kill me. One of Sarah's brothers ran into the
+house, brought out a musket and aimed it at me; but it missed fire. I
+drew my pistol the crowd keeping well away then, and told him that if he
+did not instantly bring that musket to me I would shoot him. He brought
+it, and I threw it over the fence, Sarah crying out from the window,
+"good! good!" The mob then turned and abused and blackguarded her. Then
+the old lady came out, bringing a carpet bag containing my books and
+things, asking me to see if "it was all right." I had no disposition
+to stop and examine just then; I told the mob I had no other business
+there; that I was going away, and to my surprise, I confess, I was
+permitted to leave the place unmolested.
+
+It is quite certain the ferryman made no objection to my crossing, and
+I went to Belvidere where I remained quietly till the appointed Thursday
+night, when I started with a trusty man for Scheimer's. We timed our
+journey so as to arrive there at one o'clock in the morning. Ever since
+her attempt to elope, Sarah had been watched night and day, and to
+prevent her abduction by me, Mr. Scheimer had two or three men in the
+house to stand guard at night. Sarah was locked in her room, which is
+precisely what we had provided for, for no one in the house supposed
+that she could escape by the window. There was a big dog on the
+premises, but he and I were old friends, and he seemed very glad to see
+me when I came on the ground on this eventful night. Sarah was watching,
+and when I made the signal she opened the window and threw out her ready
+prepared bundle. Then my man and I set the ladder and she came safely
+to the ground. A moment more and we would have stolen away, when, as ill
+luck would have it, the ladder fell with a great crash, and the infernal
+dog, that a moment before seemed almost in our confidence, set up a howl
+and then barked loud enough to wake the dead.
+
+Forthwith issued from the house old Scheimer, two of his sons and his
+hired guard--a half dozen in all. There was a time then. The girl was
+instantly seized and taken into the house. Then all hands fell upon us
+two, and though I and my man fought our best they managed to pound us
+nearly to death. The dog, too, in revenge no doubt for the scare the
+ladder had given him, or perhaps to show his loyalty to his master,
+assisted in routing us, and put in a bite where he could. It is a wonder
+we were not killed. Sarah, meanwhile, was calling out from the house,
+and imploring them not to murder us. How we ever got away I hardly know
+now, but presently we found ourselves in the road running for our lives,
+and running also for the carriage we had concealed in the woods, half
+a mile above. We reached it, and hastily unhitching and getting in we
+drove rapidly for the bridge crossing over to Belvidere. That beautiful
+August night had very few charms for us. It would have been different
+indeed if I had succeeded in securing my Sarah; and to think of having
+the prize in my very grasp, and the losing all!
+
+We reached the hotel in Belvidere at about half-past two o'clock in
+the morning, wearied, worn, bruised and disheartened. My man had not
+suffered nearly as severely as I had; the bulk of their blows fell upon
+me, and I had the sorest body and the worst looking face I had ever
+exhibited. I rested one day and then hurried on to New York. Of course,
+I had no means of knowing the feelings or condition of the loved girl
+from whom I had been so suddenly and so violently parted. I only learned
+from an Easton man whom I knew and whom I met in the city, that "Sarah
+Scheimer was sick"--that was all; the man said he did'nt know the family
+very well, but he had heard that Miss Scheimer had been "out of her
+head, if not downright crazy."
+
+Crazy indeed! How mad and how miserable that poor girl was made by her
+own family, I did not know till months afterward, and then I had the
+terrible story from her own lips. It seems that when her father and his
+gang returned from pursuing me, as they did a little way up the road
+towards Belvidere, they found her almost frantic. They locked her up in
+her room that night with no one to say so much as a kind word to her.
+How she passed that night, after the scenes she had witnessed, and the
+abuse with which her father and brothers had loaded her before they
+thrust her into her prison, may be imagined. The next day she was
+wrought up to a frenzy. Her parents pronounced her insane, and called in
+a Dutch doctor who examined her and said she was "bewitched!" And this
+is the remedy he proposed as a cure; he advised that she should be
+soundly flogged, and the devil whipped out of her. Her family, intensely
+angered at her for the trouble she had made them, or rather had caused
+them to make for themselves, were only too glad to accept the advice.
+The old man and two sons carried a sore bruise or two apiece they got
+from me the night before, and seized the opportunity to pay them off
+upon her. So they stripped her bare, and flogged her till her back was a
+mass of welts and cuts, and then put her to bed. That bed she never left
+for two months, and then came out the shadow of her former self. But the
+Dutch doctor declared that the devil was whipped out of her, and that
+she was entirely cured. A few months afterward the family had the best
+of reasons for believing that they had whipped the devil into her,
+instead of out of her.
+
+After staying in New York a few days, I went to Dover, N.H., where I had
+some acquaintances, and where I hoped to get into a medical practice,
+which, with the help of my friends, I did very soon. I lived quietly in
+that place all winter, earning a good living and laying by some money.
+During the whole time I never heard a word from Sarah. I wrote at least
+fifty letters to her, but as I learned afterward, and, indeed, surmised
+at the time, every one of them was intercepted by her father or
+brothers, and she did not know where I was and so could not write to me.
+I left Dover in May and went down to New York. I had some business
+there which was soon transacted, and early in June I went over to New
+Jersey--to Oxford, a small place near Belvidere.
+
+This place I meant to make my base of operations for the new campaign I
+had been planning all winter. I "put up" at a public house kept by a man
+who was known in the region round about as the "Boston Yankee," for he
+migrated from Boston to New Jersey and was doing a thriving business
+at hotel keeping in Oxford. What a thorough good-fellow he was will
+presently appear. I had been in the hotel four days and had become
+pretty intimate with the landlord before I ventured to make inquiries
+about what I was most anxious to learn; but finally I asked him if he
+knew the Scheimers over the river? He looked at me in a very comical
+way, and then broke out:
+
+"Well, I declare, I thought I knew you, you're the chap that tried to
+run away with old Scheimer's daughter Sarah, last August; and you're
+down here to get her this time, if you can."
+
+I owned up to my identity, but warned Boston Yankee that if he told any
+one who I was, or that I was about there, I'd blow his brains out.
+
+"You keep cool," said he, "don't you be uneasy; I'm your friend and the
+gal's friend, and I'll help you both all I can; and if you want to carry
+off Sarah Scheimer and marry her, I'll tell you how to work it. You see
+she has been watched as closely as possible all winter, ever since she
+got well, for she was crazy-like, awhile. Well, you could'n't get nearer
+to her, first off, than you could to the North Pole; but do you remember
+Mary Smith who was servant gal, there when you boarded with Scheimer?" I
+remembered the girl well and told him so, and he continued: "Well, I saw
+her the other day, and she told me she was living in Easton, and where
+she could be found; now, I'll give you full directions and do you take
+my horse and buggy to-morrow morning early and go down and see her, and
+get her to go over and let Sarah know that you're round; meantime I'll
+keep dark; I know my business and you know yours."
+
+I need not say how overjoyed I was to find this new and most unexpected
+friend, and how gratefully I accepted his offer. He gave me the street,
+house and number where Mary Smith lived and during the evening we
+planned together exactly how the whole affair was to be managed, from
+beginning to end. I went to bed, but could scarcely sleep; and all night
+long I was agitated by alternate hopes and fears for the success of the
+scheme of to-morrow.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV. SUCCESS WITH SARAH.
+
+MARY SMITH AS A CONFEDERATE--THE PLOT--WAITING IN THE WOODS--THE
+SPY OUTWITTED--SARAH SECURED--THE PURSUERS BAFFLED--NIGHT ON THE
+ROAD--EFFORTS TO GET MARRIED--THE "OLD OFFENDER" MARRIED AT LAST--A
+CONSTABLE AFTER SARAH--HE GIVES IT UP--AN ALE ORGIE--RETURN TO "BOSTON
+YANKEE'S"--A HOME IN GOSHEN.
+
+
+
+It was Saturday morning, and after an early breakfast I was on the road
+with Boston Yankee's fast horse; towards Easton. On my arrival there I
+had no difficulty in finding Mary Smith, who recognized me at once, and
+was very glad to see me. She knew I had come there to learn something
+about Sarah; she had seen her only a week ago; she was well again, and
+the girls had talked together about me. This was pleasant to hear, and
+I at once proposed to Mary to go to Scheimer's and tell Sarah that I
+was there; I would give her ten dollars if she would go. "O! she would
+gladly serve us both for nothing."
+
+So she made herself ready, got into the buggy, and we started for
+Scheimer's. When we were well on the road I said to her:
+
+"Now, Mary, attend carefully to what I say: you will need to be very
+cautious in breaking the news to Sarah that I am here; she has already
+suffered a great deal on my account, and may be very timid about my
+being in the neighborhood; but if she still loves me as you say she
+does, she will run any risk to see me, and, if I know her, she will be
+glad to go away with me. Now, this is what you must do; you must see her
+alone and tell her my plan; here, take this diamond ring; she knows it
+well; manage to let her see it on your finger; then tell her that if
+she is willing to leave home and marry me, I will be in the woods half a
+mile above her house to-morrow afternoon at 5 o'clock, with a horse
+and buggy ready to carry her to Belvidere. If she will not, or dare not
+come, give her the ring, and tell her we part, good friends, forever."
+
+It was a beautiful afternoon as we drove along the road. We talked about
+Sarah and old times, and I made her repeat my instructions over and
+over again and she promised to convey every word to Sarah. We neared
+Scheimer's house about six o'clock, and when we were a little way from
+there I told Mary to get out, so as to excite no suspicions as to who I
+was; she did so, and I waited till I saw her go into the house, and then
+drove rapidly by towards the Belvidere bridge, and was safely at Oxford
+by nightfall. I told my friend, the landlord, what I had done, and he
+said that everything was well planned. He also promised to go with me
+next day to assist me if necessary, and, said he:
+
+"If everything is all right, do you carry off the girl and I'll walk
+up to Belvidere; but don't bring Sarah this way--head toward Water Gap.
+When you're married fast and sure, you can come back here as leisurely
+as you're a mind to, and nobody can lay a hand upon you or her."
+
+We arranged some other minor details of our expedition and I went to
+bed.
+
+The next afternoon at four o'clock I was at the appointed place, and
+Boston Yankee was with me. I did not look for Sarah before five o'clock,
+so we tied our horse and kept a good watch upon the road. An hour went
+by and no Sarah appeared. I told Boston Yankee I did not believe she
+would come.
+
+"Don't be impatient; wait a little longer," said my friend.
+
+In twenty minutes we saw emerge, not from Scheimer's house, but from his
+eldest son's house, which was still nearer to the place where we were
+waiting, three women, two of whom I recognized as Sarah and Mary, and
+the third I did not know, nor could I imagine why she was with the other
+two; but as I saw them, leaving Boston Yankee in the woods, I drove the
+horse down into the road. As Sarah drew near she kissed her hand to me
+and came up to the wagon. "Are you ready to go with me?" I asked. "I
+am, indeed," was her reply, and I put out my hand to help her into the
+buggy. But the third woman caught hold of her dress, tried to prevent
+her from getting in, and began to scream so as to attract attention at
+Sarah's brother's house. I told the woman to let her go, and threatened
+her with my whip. "Get away," shouted Boston Yankee, who had come upon
+the scene. "Drive as fast as you can; never mind if you kill the horse."
+
+We started; the woman still shouting for help, and I drove on as rapidly
+as the horse would go. When we had gone on a mile or two, I asked
+Sarah what all this meant? She told me that the woman was her brother's
+servant; that Mary and herself left her father's house a little after
+four o'clock to go over and call at her brother's; that just before
+five, when she was to meet me, she and Mary proposed to go out for a
+walk; that the whole family watched her constantly, and so her brother's
+wife told the servant woman to get on her things and go with them.
+"You, may be sure," she, added, "that the woman will arouse the whole
+neighborhood, and that they will all be after us." I needed no further
+hint to push on. We were going toward Water Gap, as Boston Yankee had
+advised, and when we were about eight miles on the way, I deemed it
+prudent to drive into the woods and to wait till night before going on.
+We drove in just off the road, and tied our horse. We were effectually
+concealed; our pursuers, if there were any, would be sure to go by us,
+and meantime we could talk over our plans for the future. Sarah told me
+that when Mary came to the house the night before, she was not at all
+surprised to see her, as she occasionally came up from Easton to
+make them a little visit, and to stay all night; that she went to the
+summer-house with Mary to sit down and talk, and almost immediately saw
+the ring on Mary's finger; that when she saw it she at once recognized
+it, and asked her: "O! Mary, where did you get that ring?" "Keep
+quiet," said Mary: "don't talk loud, or some one may hear you; don't
+be agitated; your lover is near, and has sent me to tell you." It was
+joyful news to Sarah, and how readily she had acquiesced in my plan for
+an elopement was manifest in the fact that she was then by my side.
+
+We bad not been in the woods an hour when, as I anticipated, we heard
+our pursuers, we did not know how many there were, drive rapidly by.
+"Now we can go on, I suppose," said Sarah. "Oh no, my dear," I replied,
+"now is just the time to wait quietly here;" and wait we did till eight
+o'clock, when our pursuers, having gone on a few miles, and having seen
+or learned nothing of the fugitives, came by again "on the back track."
+They must have thought we had turned off into some other road. I waited
+a while longer to let our friend's get a little nearer home and further
+away from us, and then took the road again toward Water Gap.
+
+We reached Water Gap at midnight, had some supper and fed the horse. We
+rested awhile, and then drove leisurely on nine miles further, where we
+waited till daylight and crossed the river. We were in no great hurry
+now; we were comparatively safe from pursuit. We soon came to a public
+house, where we stopped and put out the horse, intending to take
+breakfast. While I was inquiring of the landlord if there was a justice
+of the peace in the neighborhood, the landlord's wife had elicited from
+Sarah the fact of our elopement, who she was, who her folks were, and so
+on. The well-meaning landlady advised Sarah to go back home and get
+her parents consent before she married. Sarah suggested that the very
+impossibility of getting such consent was the reason for her running
+away; nor did it appear how she was to go back home alone even if she
+desired to. We saw that we could get no help there, so I countermanded
+my order for breakfast, offering at the same time to pay for it as if we
+had eaten it, ordered out my horse and drove on. After riding some
+ten miles we arrived at another public house on the road, and as the
+landlord come out to the door I immediately asked him where I could
+find a justice of the peace? He laughed, for he at once comprehended the
+whole situation, and said:
+
+"Well, well! I am an old offender myself; I ran away with my wife; there
+is a justice of the peace two miles from here, and if you'll come in
+I'll have him here within an hour."
+
+We had reached the right place at last, for while the landlady was
+getting breakfast for us, and doing her best to make us comfortable and
+happy, the Old Offender himself took his horse and carriage and went for
+the justice. By the time we had finished our breakfast he was back
+with him, and Sarah and I were married in "less than no time," the Old
+Offender and his wife singing the certificate as witnesses. I never
+paid a fee more gladly. We were married now, and all the Scheimers in
+Pennsylvania were welcome to come and see us if they pleased.
+
+No Scheimers came that day; but the day following came a deputation from
+that family, some half dozen delegates, and with them a constable from
+Easton, with a warrant to arrest Sarah for something--I never knew
+what--but at any rate he was to take her home if necessary by force. The
+Old Offender declined to let these people into his house; Sarah told me
+to keep out of the way and she would see what was wanted. Whereupon she
+boldly went to the door and greeted those of her acquaintances who were
+in the party. The constable knew her, and told her he had come to take
+her home. "But what if I refuse to go?" "Well then, I have a warrant
+to take you; but if you are married, I have no power over you." Well
+married I am, said Sarah, and she produced the certificate, and the
+Old Offender and his wife came out and declared that they witnessed the
+ceremony.
+
+What was to be done? evidently nothing; only the constable ordered a
+whole barrel of ale to treat his posse and any one about tire town who
+chose to drink, and the barrel was rolled out on the grass, tapped, and
+for a half hour there was a great jollification, which was not exactly
+in honor of our wedding, but which afforded the greatest gratification
+to the constable, his retainers, and those who happened to gather to see
+what was going on. This ended, and the bill paid, the Easton delegation
+got into their wagons and turned their horses heads towards home.
+
+We passed three delightful days under the Old Offender's roof, and
+then thanking our host for his kindness to us, and paying our bill, we
+started on our return journey for Oxford. We arrived safely, and staid
+with Boston Yankee a fortnight. We were close by the Scheimer homestead,
+which was but a few miles away across the river; but we feared neither
+father nor brothers, nor even the woman who was so unwilling to let
+Sarah go with me. The constable, and the rest had carried home the news
+of our marriage, and the old folks made the best of it. Indeed, after
+they heard we had returned to Oxford, Sarah's mother sent a man over to
+tell her that if she would come home any day she could pack her clothes
+and other things, and take them away with her. The day after we received
+this invitation, Boston Yankee offered to take Sarah over home, and
+promised to bring her safely back. So she went, was treated tolerably
+well, at any rate, she secured her clothes and brought them home with
+her.
+
+It was now time to bid farewell to our staunch friend, Boston Yankee. I
+had inducements to go to Goshen, Orange County, N. Y., where I had many
+acquaintances, and to Goshen we went. We found a good boarding place,
+and I began to practice medicine, After we had been there a while, Sarah
+wrote home to let her family know where she was, and that she was well
+and happy. Her father wrote in reply that we both might come there at
+any time, and that if she would come home he would do as well by her as
+he would by any of his children. This letter made Sarah uneasy. In spite
+of all the ill usage she had received from her parents and family, she
+was nevertheless homesick, and longed to get back again. I could see
+that this feeling grew upon her daily. We were pleasantly situated
+where we were; I had a good and growing practice, and we had made many
+friends; but this did not satisfy her; she had some property in her own
+right, but her father was trustee of it, and he had hitherto kept it
+away from her from spite at her love affair with me. But now she was to
+be taken into favor again, and she represented to me that we could go
+back and get her money, and that I could establish myself there as well
+as anywhere; we could live well and happily among her friends and old
+associations. These things were dinged in my ears day after day, till I
+was sick of the very sound. I could see that she was bound, or, as the
+Dutch doctor would have said, "bewitched" to go back, and at last, after
+five happy months in Goshen, in an evil hour I consented to go home with
+her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V. HOW THE SCHEIMERS MADE ME SUFFER.
+
+RETURN TO SCHEIMER--PEACE AND THEN PANDEMONIUM--FRIGHTFUL FAMILY
+ROW--RUNNING FOR REFUGE--THE GANG AGAIN--ARREST AT MIDNIGHT--STRUGGLE
+WITH MY CAPTORS--IN JAIL ONCE MORE--PUT IN IRONS--A HORRIBLE PRISON
+BREAKING OUT--THE DUNGEON--SARAH'S BABY--CURIOUS COMPROMISES--OLD
+SCHEIMER MY JAILER--SIGNING A BOND--FREE AGAIN--LAST WORDS FROM SARAH.
+
+
+
+We went back to the Scheimer homestead and were favorably received.
+There was no special enthusiasm over our return, no marked
+demonstrations of delight; but they seemed glad to see us, and all the
+unpleasant things of the past, if not forgotten, were tacitly ignored
+on all sides. We passed a pleasant evening together in what seemed a
+re-united family circle--one of the brothers only was absent--and next
+morning we met cordially around the breakfast table. I really began to
+think it was possible that all the old difficulties might be healed, and
+that the pleasant picture Sarah painted, at Goshen, about settling down
+happily in Pennsylvania, could be fully realized.
+
+After breakfast I took a conveyance to go three or four miles to see a
+man who owed me some money for medical services in his family, and was
+away from Scheimer's three or four hours. During this brief absence I
+could not help thinking with genuine satisfaction of the happiness Sarah
+was experiencing in the gratification of her longing to return home
+again. Surely, I thought, she must be happy now. No more homesickness,
+and a full and complete reconciliation with her family; all the anger,
+abuse, and blows forgotten or forgiven; she restored to her place in the
+family; and even her objectionable husband received with open arms.
+
+But what an enormous difference there is between fancy and fact. During
+this brief absence of mine, had come home the brother who had always
+seemed to concentrate the hatred of the whole family towards me for the
+wrong they assumed I had done to the youngest daughter who loved me.
+On my return I found the peaceful home I left in the morning a perfect
+pandemonium. Sarah was fairly frantic. The whole family were abusing
+her. The returned brother especially, was calling her all the vile names
+he could lay his tongue to. I learned afterwards that he had been doing
+it ever since he came into the house that day and found her at home and
+heard that I was with her. They had picked, wrenched rather, out of her
+the secret I had confided to her that I had another wife from whom I was
+"separated," but not divorced. My sudden presence on this scene was not
+exactly oil on troubled waters; it was gunpowder to fire. As soon as
+Sarah saw me at the door she cried out:
+
+"O! husband, let us go away from here."
+
+Her mother turned and shouted at me that I had better fly at once or
+they would kill me. Meanwhile, that mob, which the Scheimer boys seemed
+always to have at hand, was gathering in the dooryard. I managed to get
+near enough to Sarah to tell her that I would send a man for her next
+day, and then if she was willing to come with me she must get away
+from her family if possible. I then made a rush through the crowd, and
+reached the road. I think the gang had an indistinct knowledge of the
+situation, or they would have mobbed me, and perhaps killed me. They
+knew something was "to pay" at Scheimer's, but did not know exactly
+what. Once on the road it was my intention to have gone over to
+Belvidere, and then on to Oxford, where I should have found a sure
+refuge with my friend Boston Yankee.
+
+Would that I had done so; but I was a fool; I thought I could be of
+service to Sarah by remaining near her; might see her next day; I might
+even be able to get her out of the house, and then we could once more
+elope together and go back again to Goshen where we had been so happy.
+So I went to a public house three miles above Scheimer's, and remained
+there quietly during the rest of the day, revolving plans for the
+deliverance of Sarah. I thought only of her. It is strange that I did
+not once realize what a perilous position I was in myself--that, firmly
+as I believed myself to be wedded to Sarah, I was in fact amenable to
+the law, and liable to arrest and punishment. All this never occurred to
+me. I saw one or two of the gang who were at Scheimer's about the hotel,
+but they did not offer to molest me, and I paid no particular attention
+to them. I did not know then that they were spies and were watching my
+movements. At nine o'clock I went to bed. At midnight, or thereabouts,
+I was roughly awakened and told to get up. Without waiting for me,
+to comply, five men who had entered my room pulled me out of bed, and
+almost before I could huddle on my clothes I was handcuffed. Then one of
+them, who said he was a constable from Easton, showed a warrant for my
+arrest. What the arrest was for I was not informed. I was taken down
+stairs, put into a wagon, the men followed, and the horses started in
+the direction of Easton. By Scheimer's on the way, and I could see a
+light in Sarah's window. I remembered how in, all the Bedlam in
+the house that morning she still cried out: "I will go with him." I
+remembered how, only a few months before, she had been brutally flogged
+in that very chamber, to "get the devil out of her." I remembered, too,
+the many happy, happy hours we had passed together. And here was I,
+handcuffed and dragged in a wagon, I knew not whither.
+
+This for thoughts--in the way of action, was all the while trying to
+get my handcuffs off, and at last I succeeded in getting one hand free.
+Waiting my opportunity till we came to a piece of woods, I suddenly
+jumped up and sprang from the wagon. It was a very dark night, and in
+running into the woods I struck against a tree with such force as
+to knock me down and nearly stun me. Two of the men were on me in an
+instant. After a brief struggle I managed to get away and ran again. I
+should have escaped, only a high rail fence brought me to a sudden stop,
+and I was too exhausted to climb over it. My pursuers who were hard at
+my heels the whole while now laid hold of me. In the subsequent struggle
+I got out my pocket knife, and stabbed one of them, cutting his arm
+badly. Then they overpowered me. They dragged me to the roadside,
+brought a rope out of the wagon, bound my arms and legs, and so at last
+carried me to Easton.
+
+It was nearly daylight when I was thrust into jail. There were no cells,
+only large rooms for a dozen or more men, and I was put, into one of
+these with several prisoners who were awaiting trial, or who had been
+tried and were there till they could be sent to prison. It was a day
+or two before I found out what I was there for. Then a Dutch Deputy
+Sheriff, who was also keeper of the jail, came and told me that I was
+held for bigamy, adding the consoling intelligence that it would be a
+very hard job for me, and that I would get five or six years in State
+prison sure. I was well acquainted in Easton, and I sent for lawyer
+Litgreave for assistance and advice. I sent also to my half-sister in
+Delaware County, N. Y., and in a day or two she came and saw me, and
+gave Mr. Litgreave one hundred dollars retaining fee. My lawyer went to
+see the Scheimers and when he returned he told me that he hoped to save
+me from State prison--at all events he would exercise the influence he
+had over the family to that end; but I must expect to remain in jail a
+long time. Precisely what this meant I did not know then; but I found
+out afterwards.
+
+Soon after this visit from the lawyer, the Deputy Sheriff came in and
+said that he was ordered "by the Judge" to iron me, and it was done.
+They were heavy leg-irons weighing full twelve pounds, and I may say
+here that I wore them during the whole term of my imprisonment in this
+jail, or rather they wore me--wearing their way in time almost into
+the bone. I had been here a week now, and was well acquainted with the
+character of the place. It was indescribably filthy; no pretence was
+made of cleansing it. The prisoners were half fed, and, at that, the
+food was oftentimes so vile that starving men rejected it. The deputy
+who kept the jail was cruel and malignant, and took delight in torturing
+his prisoners. He would come in sometimes under pretence of looking at
+my irons to see if they were safe, and would twist and turn them about
+so that I suffered intolerable pain, and blood flowed from my wounds
+made by these cruel irons. Such abuse as he could give with his tongue
+he dispensed freely. Of course he was a coward, and he never dared to
+come into one of the prisoner's rooms unless he was armed. This is a
+faithful photograph of the interior of the jail at Easton, Penn., as
+it was a few years ago; there may have been some improvement since that
+time; for the sake of humanity, I hope there has been.
+
+After I had been in this jail about six weeks, and had become well
+acquainted with my room-mates, I communicated to them one day, the
+result of my observation:
+
+"There," said I, showing them a certain place in the wall, "is a loose
+stone that with a little labor can be lifted out, and it will leave a
+hole large enough for us to get out of and go where we like."
+
+Examination elicited a unanimous verdict in favor of making the attempt.
+With no tools but a case knife we dug out the mortar on all sides of the
+stone doing the work by turns and covering the stone by hanging up an
+old blanket--which excited no suspicion, as it was at the head of one of
+the iron bedsteads--whenever the Deputy or any of his men were likely to
+visit us. In twelve days we completed the work, and could lift out the
+stone. The hole was large enough to let a man through, and there was
+nothing for us to do but to crawl out one after the other and drop down
+a few feet into the yard. This yard was surrounded by a board fence that
+could be easily surmounted. I intended to take the lead, after taking
+off my irons (which I had learned to do, and indeed, did every day,
+putting them on only when I was liable to be "inspected") and after
+leaving these irons at the Deputy's door, I intended to put myself on
+the Jersey side of the river as speedily as possible.
+
+Liberty was within reach of every man in that room, and the night was
+set for the escape. But one of the crowd turned traitor, and, under
+pretence, of speaking to the Deputy about some matter, managed to be
+called out of the room and disclosed the whole. The man was waiting
+transportation to prison to serve out a sentence of ten years, and,
+with the chance of escape before him, it seemed singular that he should
+reveal a plan which promised to give him liberty; but probably he
+feared a failure; or that he might be recaptured and his prison sentence
+increased; while on the other hand by disclosing the plot he could
+curry favor enough to get his term reduced, and perhaps he might gain a
+pardon. Any how, he betrayed us. The Deputy came in and found the stone
+in the condition described, and forthwith we were all removed to the
+dungeon, or dark room, and kept there on bread and water for twelve
+days. We heard afterwards that our betrayer did get five years less than
+his original sentence for subjecting his comrades in misery to twelve
+days of almost indescribable suffering. We were not only in a totally
+dark and frightfully filthy hole, but we were half starved, and the
+Deputy daily took delight in taunting us with our sufferings.
+
+At the end of the twelve days we were taken back to the old room where
+we found the stone securely fastened in with irons. Moreover, we were
+now under stricter observation, and at stated hours every day, an
+inspector came in and examined the walls. This soon wore off, however,
+and when the inspection was finally abandoned, about two months from the
+time of our first attempt, we managed to find another place in the old
+wall where we could dig out and we went to work. We were a fortnight at
+it, and had nearly completed our labor when we were discovered.
+
+This time we spent fourteen days in the dungeon for our pains.
+
+And now comes an extraordinary disclosure with regard to my
+imprisonment. A few days after my removal from the dungeon to the old
+quarters again, the Deputy, in one of his rare periods of what, with
+him, passed for good humor, informed me that Sarah had been confined,
+and had given birth to a fine boy; that she was crying for my release;
+that Lawyer Sitgreave was interceding for me; but that the old man
+Scheimer was still obstinate and would not let me out. Passing over
+my feelings with regard to the birth of my son, here was a revelation
+indeed! It will be remembered that I had only been told that I was under
+indictment for bigamy. I had never been brought before a justice for
+a preliminary examination; never bound over for trial; and now it
+transpired that old Scheimer, a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, had the
+power to put me in jail, put me in irons, and subject me to long months,
+perhaps years of imprisonment. I had something to occupy my thoughts
+now, and for the remaining period of my jail life.
+
+Next came a new dodge of the Scheimers, the object of which was to show
+that Sarah's marriage to me was no marriage at all, thus leaving her
+free to marry any other man her family might force upon her. When I had
+been in jail seven months, one day the Deputy came in and said that he
+was going to take off my irons. I told him I wouldn't trouble him to
+do that, for though I had worn them when he and his subordinates were
+around till the irons had nearly killed me, yet at other times I had
+been in a habit of taking them off at pleasure; and to prove it, I sat
+down and in a few minutes handed him the irons. The man was amazed; but
+saying nothing about the irons, he approached me on another subject. He
+said he thought if I would sign an acknowledgment that I was a married
+man when I married Sarah Scheimer, and would leave the State forever, I
+could get out of jail; would I do it? I told him I would give no answer
+till I had seen my counsel.
+
+Well, the next day Lawyer Sitgreave came to me and told me I had better
+do it, and I consented. Shortly afterwards, I was taken to court, for
+the first time in this whole affair, and was informed by the judge that
+if I would sign a bond not to go near the Scheimer house or family he
+would discharge me. I signed such a bond, and the judge then told me I
+was discharged; but that I ought to have gone to State prison for ten
+years for destroying the peace and happiness of the Scheimer family.
+Truly the Scheimer family were a power, indeed, in that part of the
+country!
+
+My lawyer gave me five dollars and I went to Harmony and staid that
+night. The next day I went to an old friend of mine, a Methodist
+minister, and persuaded him to go over and see what Sarah Scheimer's
+feelings were towards me, and if she was willing to come to me with our
+child. He went over there, but the old Scheimers suspected his errand,
+and watched him closely to see that he held no communication with Sarah.
+He did, however, have an opportunity to speak to her, and she sent me
+word that if she could ever get her money and get away from her parents,
+she would certainly join me in any part of the world. I was warned, at
+the same time, not to come near the house, for fear that her father or
+some of her brothers would kill me.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI. FREE LIFE AND FISHING.
+
+TAKING CARE OF CRAZY MEN--CARRYING OFF A BOY--ARRESTED FOR STEALING MY
+OWN HORSE AND BUGGY--FISHING IN LAKE WINNIPISEOGEE--AN ODD LANDLORD--A
+WOMAN AS BIG AS A HOGSHEAD--REDUCING THE HOGSHEAD TO A BARREL--WONDERFUL
+VERIFICATION OF A DREAM--SUCCESSFUL MEDICAL PRACTICE--A BUSY WINTER
+IN NEW HAMPSHIRE--BLANDISHMENTS OF CAPTAIN BROWN--I GO TO NEWARK, NEW
+JERSEY.
+
+
+
+The next day I left Harmony and walked to Port Jarvis, on the Erie
+Railroad, N. Y., arriving late at night, and entirely footsore, sick,
+and disheartened. I went to the hotel, and the next morning I found
+myself seriously sick. Asking advice, I was directed to the house of
+a widow, who promised to nurse and take care of me. I was ill for two
+weeks, and meantime, my half-sister in Delaware County, to whom I
+made known my condition, sent me money for my expenses, and when I
+had sufficiently recovered to travel, I went to this sister's house in
+Sidney, and there I remained several days, till I was quite well and
+strong again.
+
+Casting about for something to do, a friend told me that he knew of
+an opportunity for a good man at Newbury to take care of a young man,
+eighteen years of age, who was insane. I went there and saw his father,
+and he put him under my charge. I had the care of him four months, and
+during the last two months of the time I traveled about with him,
+and returned him, finally, to his friends in a materially improved
+condition. The friends of another insane man in Montgomery, near
+Newbury, hearing of my success with this young man, sent for me to come
+and see them. I went there and found a man who had been insane seven
+years, but who was quiet and well-behaved, only he was "out of his
+head." I engaged to do what I could for him. The father of my Newbury
+patient had paid me well, and with my medical practice and the sale of
+medicines in traveling about, I had accumulated several hundred dollars,
+and when I went to Montgomery I had a good horse and buggy which cost me
+five hundred dollars. So, when my new patient had been under my care and
+control two months, I proposed that he should travel about with me in my
+buggy, and visit various parts of the State in the immediate vicinity.
+His friends thought well of the suggestion, and we traveled in this way
+about four months, stopping a few days here and there, when I practiced
+where I could, and sold medicines, making some money. At the end of
+this time I went back to Montgomery with my patient, as I think, fully
+restored, and his father, besides, paying the actual expenses of our
+journey, gave me six hundred dollars.
+
+Returning to Sidney I learned that my first and worst wife was then
+living with the children at Unadilla, a few miles across the river in
+Otsego County. I had no desire to see her, but I heard at the same time
+that my youngest boy, a lad ten years old, had been sent to work on a
+farm three miles beyond, and that he was not well taken care of. I drove
+over to see about it, and after some inquiry I was told that the boy
+was then in school. Going to the schoolhouse and asking for him, the
+school-mistress, who knew me, denied that he was there, but I pushed
+in, and found him, and a ragged, miserable looking little wretch he was.
+I brought him out, put him into the carriage and took him with me on the
+journey which I was then contemplating to Amsterdam, N. Y., stopping
+at the first town to get him decently clothed. The boy went with me
+willingly, indeed he was glad to go, and in due time we arrived at
+Amsterdam, and from there we went to Troy.
+
+I had not been in Troy two hours before I was arrested for stealing my
+own horse and buggy! My turnout was taken from me, and I found myself in
+durance vile. I was not long in procuring bail, and I then set myself,
+to work to find out what this meant. I was shown a handbill describing
+my person, giving my name, giving a description of my horse, and
+offering a reward of fifty dollars for my arrest. This was signed by
+a certain Benson, of Kingston, Sullivan County, N.Y. I then remembered
+that while I was traveling with my insane patient from Montgomery
+through Sullivan County, I fell in with a Benson who was a very
+plausible fellow, and who scraped acquaintance with me, and while I was
+at Kingston he rode about with me on one or two occasions. One day he
+told me that he knew a girl just out of the place who was subject to
+fits, and wanted to know if I could do anything for her; that her father
+was rich and would pay a good price to have her cured. I went to see the
+girl and did at least enough to earn a fee of one hundred dollars,
+which her father gladly paid me. Benson also introduced me to some other
+people whom I found profitable patients. I thought he was a very good
+friend to me, but he was a cool, calculating rascal. He meant to rob me
+of my horse and buggy, and went deliberately to work about it. First, he
+issued the handbill which caused my arrest in Troy, where he knew I was
+going. Next, as appeared when he came up to Troy to prosecute the suit
+against me, he forged a bill of sale. The case was tried and decided
+in my favor. Benson appealed, and again it was decided that the horse
+belonged to me. I then had him indicted for perjury and forgery, and he
+was put under bonds of fourteen hundred dollars in each case to appear
+for trial. Some how or other he never appeared, and whether he forfeited
+his bonds, or otherwise slipped through the "meshes of the law," I never
+learned, nor have I ever seen him since he attempted to swindle me.
+But these proceedings kept me in Troy more than a month, and to pay
+my lawyer and other expenses, I actually sold the horse and buggy the
+scoundrel tried to steal from me.
+
+Taking my boy to Sidney and putting him under the care of my half
+sister, I went to Boston, where I met two friends of mine who were
+about going to Meredith Bridge, N.H., to fish through the ice on Lake
+Winnipiseogee. It was early in January, 1853, and good, clear, cold
+weather. They represented the sport to be capital, and said that plenty
+of superb lake trout and pickerel could be taken every day, and urged me
+to go with them. As I had nothing special to do for a few days, I went.
+When we reached Meredith we stopped at a tavern near the lake, kept by
+one of the oddest landlords I have ever met. After a good supper, as
+we were sitting in the barroom, the landlord came up to me and at once
+opened conversation in the following manner:
+
+"Waal, where do you come from, anyhow?"
+
+"From Boston," I replied.
+
+"Waal, what be you, anyhow?"
+
+"Well, I practice medicine, and take care of the sick."
+
+"Dew ye? Waal, do ye ever cure anybody?"
+
+"O, sometimes; quite frequently, in fact."
+
+"Dew ye! waal, there's a woman up here to Lake Village, 'Squire
+Blaisdell's wife, who has had the dropsy more'n twelve years; been
+filling' all the time till they tell me she's bigger'n a hogshead now,
+and she's had a hundred doctors, and the more doctors she has the bigger
+she gets; what d' ye think of that now?"
+
+I answered that I thought it was quite likely, and then turned away
+from the landlord to talk to my friends about our proposed sport for
+to-morrow, mentally making note of 'Squire Blaisdell's wife in Lake
+Village.
+
+After breakfast next morning we went out on the lake, cut holes in the
+ice, set our lines, and before dinner we had taken several fine trout
+and pickerel, the largest and finest of which we put into a box with
+ice, and sent as a present to President Pierce, in Washington. We had
+agreed, the night before, to fish for him the first day, and to send
+him the best specimens we could from his native state. After dinner my
+friends started to go out on the ice again, and I told them "I guess'd I
+wouldn't go with them, I had fished enough for that day." They insisted
+I should go, but I told them I preferred to take a walk and explore the
+country. So they went to the lake and I walked up to Lake Village.
+
+I soon found Mr. Blaisdell's house, and as the servant who came to the
+door informed me that Mr. Blaisdell was not at home, I asked to see
+Mrs. Blaisdell, And was shown in to that lady. She was not quite the
+"hogshead" the landlord declared her to be, but she was one of the worst
+cases of dropsy I had ever seen. I introduced myself to her, told her my
+profession, and that I had called upon her in the hope of being able to
+afford her some relief; that I wanted nothing for my services unless I
+could really benefit her.
+
+"O, Doctor," said she, "you can do nothing for me; in the past twelve
+years I have had at least forty different doctors, and none of them have
+helped me."
+
+"But there can be no harm in trying the forty-first;" and as I said
+it I took from my vest pocket and held out in the palm of my hand some
+pills:
+
+"Here, madame, are some pills made from a simple blossom, which cannot
+possibly harm you, and which, I am sure, will do you a great deal of
+good."
+
+"O, Mary!" she exclaimed to her niece, who was in attendance upon her,
+"this is my dream! I dreamed last night that my father appeared to me
+and told me that a stranger would come with a blossom in his hand; that
+he would offer it to me, and that if I would take it I should recover.
+Go and get a glass of water and I will take these pills at once."
+
+"Surely," said Mary, "you are not going to take this stranger's medicine
+without knowing anything about it, or him?"
+
+"I am indeed; go and get the water."
+
+She took the medicine and then told me that her father, who had died two
+years ago, was a physician, and had carefully attended to her case as
+long as he lived; but that she had a will of her own, and had sent far
+and near for other doctors, though with no good result.
+
+"You have come to me," she continued, "and although I am not
+superstitious, your coming with a blossom in your hand, figuratively
+speaking, is so exactly in accordance with my dream, that I am going to
+put myself under your care."
+
+She then asked me if I lived in the neighborhood, and I told her no;
+that I had merely come up from Boston with two friends to try a few
+days' fishing through the ice on the lake.
+
+"You can fish to better purpose here, I think," she said; "you can get
+plenty of practice in the villages and farm houses about here: at any
+rate, stay for the present and undertake my case, and I will pay you
+liberally."
+
+I went back to Meredith Bridge--I believe it is now called Laconia--and
+had another day's fishing with my friends. When they were ready to pack
+up and return to Boston, I astonished them by informing them that I
+should stay where I was for the present, perhaps for months, and that I
+believed I could find a good practice in Meredith and adjoining places.
+So they left me and I went to Lake Village, and made that pleasant place
+my headquarters.
+
+The weeks wore on, and if Mrs. Blaisdell was a hogshead, as the Meredith
+landlord said, when I first saw her, she soon became a barrel under my
+treatment, and in four months she was entirely cured, and was as sound
+as any woman in the State. I had as much other business too as I could
+attend to, and was very busy and happy all the time.
+
+In May I went to Exeter, alternating between there and Portsmouth, and
+finding enough to do till the end of July. While I was in Portsmouth
+on one of my last visits to that place, I received a call from a
+sea-captain by the name of Brown, who told me that he had heard of my
+success in dropsical cases, and that I must go to Newark, N. J., and
+see his daughter. "Pay," he said, "was no object; I must go." I told him
+that I had early finished my business in that vicinity, and that when I
+went to New York, as I proposed to do shortly, I would go over to
+Newark and see his daughter. A few days afterward, when I had settled my
+business and collected my bills in Portsmouth and Exeter, I went to New
+York, and from there to Newark.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. WEDDING A WIDOW, AND THE CONSEQUENCES.
+
+I MARRY A WIDOW--SIX WEEKS OF HAPPINESS--CONFIDING A SECRET AND THE
+CONSEQUENCES--THE WIDOW'S BROTHER--SUDDEN FLIGHT FROM NEWARK--IN
+HARTFORD, CONN.--MY WIFE'S SISTER BETRAYS ME--TRIAL FOR
+BIGAMY--SENTENCED TO TEN YEARS IMPRISONMENT--I BECOME A "BOBBIN BOY"--A
+GOOD FRIEND--GOVERNOR PRICE VISITS ME IN PRISON--HE PARDONS ME--TEN
+YEARS' SENTENCE FULFILLED IN SEVEN MONTHS.
+
+
+
+Why in the world did Captain Brown ever tempt me with the prospect of
+a profitable patient in Newark? I had no thought of going to that city,
+and no business there except to see if I could cure Captain Brown's
+daughter. With my matrimonial monomania it was like putting my hand into
+the fire to go to a fresh place, where I should see fresh faces, and
+where fresh temptations would beset me. And when I went to Newark, I
+went only as I supposed, to see a single patient; but Captain Brown
+prevailed upon me to stay to take care of his daughter, and assured me
+that he and his friends would secure me a good practice. They did. In
+two months I was doing as well in my profession as I had ever done in
+any place where I had located. I might have attended strictly to my
+business, and in a few years have acquired a handsome competence. But,
+as ill luck, which, strangely enough, I then considered good luck, would
+have it, when I had been in Newark some two months, I became acquainted
+with a buxom, good-looking widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Roberts. I protest
+to-day that she courted me--not I her. She was fair, fascinating, and
+had a goodly share of property. I fell into the snare. She said she was
+lonely; she sighed; she smiled, and I was lost.
+
+Would that I had observed the elder Weller's injunction: "Bevare of
+vidders;" would that I had never seen the Widow Roberts, or rather that
+she had never seen me. Eight weeks after we first met we were married.
+We had a great wedding in her own house, and all her friends were
+present. I was in good practice with as many patients as I could attend
+to; she had a good home and we settled down to be very happy.
+
+For six weeks, only six weeks, I think we were so. We might have been
+so for six weeks, six months, six years longer; but alas! I was a fool I
+confided to her the secret of my first marriage, and separation, and she
+confided the same secret to her brother, a well-to-do wagon-maker in
+Newark. So far as Elizabeth was concerned, she said she didn't care;
+so long as the separation was mutual and final, since so many years
+had elapsed, and especially since I hadn't seen the woman for full six
+years, and was not supposed to know whether she was alive or dead, why,
+it was as good as a divorce; so reasoned Elizabeth, and it was precisely
+my own reasoning, and the reasoning which had got me into numberless
+difficulties, to say nothing of jails and prisons. But the brother had
+his doubts about it, and came and talked to me on the subject several
+times. We quarrelled about it. He threatened to have me arrested for
+bigamy. I told him that if he took a step in that direction I would flog
+him. Then he had me brought before a justice for threatening him, with a
+view to having me put under bonds to keep the peace. I employed a lawyer
+who managed my case so well that the justice concluded there was no
+cause of action against me.
+
+But this lawyer informed me that the brother was putting, even then,
+another rod in pickle for me, and that I had better clear out. I took
+his advice, I went to the widow's house, packed my trunk, gathered
+together what money I could readily lay hands upon, and with about $300
+in my pocket, I started for New York, staying that night at a hotel in
+Courtland street.
+
+The following morning I went over to Jersey City, hired a saddle-horse,
+and rode to Newark. The precise object of my journey I do not think I
+knew myself; but I must have had some vague idea of persuading Elizabeth
+to leave Newark and join me in New York or elsewhere. I confess, too,
+that I was more or less under the influence of liquor, and considerably
+more than less. However, no one would have noticed this in my appearance
+or demeanor. I rode directly to Elizabeth's door, hitched my horse, and
+went into the house. The moment my wife saw me she cried out:
+
+"For God's sake get out of this house and out of town as soon as you
+can; they have been watching for you ever since yesterday; they've got a
+warrant for your arrest; don't stay here one moment."
+
+I asked her if she was willing to follow me, and she said she would
+do so if she only dared but her brother had made an awful row, and had
+sworn he would put me in prison anyhow; I had better go back to New York
+and await events. I started for the door, and was unhitching my horse,
+when the brother and a half dozen more were upon me. I sprang to the
+saddle. They tried to stop me; the over-eager brother even caught me
+by the foot; but I dashed through the crowd and rode like mad to Jersey
+City, returned the horse to the livery stable, crossed the ferry to New
+York, went to my hotel, got my trunk, and started for Hartford, Conn.,
+where I arrived in the evening.
+
+This was in the month of June, 1854. I went to the old Exchange Hotel in
+State street, and very soon acquired a good practice. Indeed, it seems
+as if I was always successful enough in my medical business--my mishaps
+have been in the matrimonial line. When I had been in Hartford about
+three months, and was well settled, I thought I would go down to New
+York and see a married sister of Elizabeth's, who was living there, and
+try to find out how matters were going on over in Newark. That I found
+out fully, if not exactly to my satisfaction, will appear anon.
+
+When I called at the sister's house, the servant told me she was out,
+but would be back in an hour; so I left my name, promising to call
+again. I returned again at one o'clock in the afternoon, and the sister
+was in, but declined to see me. As I was coming down the steps, a
+policeman who seemed to be lounging on the opposite side of the street,
+beckoned to me, and suspecting nothing, I crossed over to see what he
+wanted. He simply wanted to know my name, and when I gave it to him he
+informed me that I was his prisoner. I asked for what? and he said "as a
+fugitive from justice in New Jersey."
+
+This was for taking the pains to come down from Hartford to inquire
+after the welfare of my wife! whose sister, the moment the servant told
+her I had been there, and would call again, had gone to the nearest
+police station and given information, or made statements, which led to
+the setting of this latest trap for me. The policeman took me before a
+justice who sent me to the Tombs. On my arrival there I managed to pick
+up a lawyer, or rather one of the sharks of the place picked me up, and
+said that for twenty-five dollars he would get me clear in three or
+four hours. I gave him the money, and from that day till now, I have
+never set eyes upon him. I lay in a cell all night, and next morning
+Elizabeth's brother, to whom the sister in New York had sent word that
+I was caged, came over from Newark to see me. He said he felt sorry for
+me, but that he was "bound to put me through." He then asked me if I
+would go over to Newark without a requisition from the Governor of
+New Jersey, and I told him I would not; whereupon he went away without
+saying another word, and I waited all day to hear from the lawyer to
+whom I had given twenty-five dollars, but he did not come.
+
+So next day when the brother came over and asked me the same question,
+I said I would go; wherein I was a fool; for I ought to have reflected
+that he had had twenty-four hours in which to get a requisition, and
+that he might in fact have made application for one already, without
+getting it, and every delay favored my chances of getting out. But I had
+no one to advise me, and so I went quietly with him and an officer to
+the ferry, where we crossed and went by cars to Newark. I was at once
+taken before a justice, who, after a hearing of the case, bound me over,
+under bonds of only one thousand dollars, to take my trial for bigamy.
+
+If I could have gone into the street I could have procured this
+comparatively trifling bail in half an hour; as it was, after I was in
+jail I sent for a man whom I knew, and gave him my gold watch and one
+hundred dollars, all the money I had, to procure me bail, which he
+promised to do; but he never did a thing for me, except to rob me.
+
+A lawyer came to me and offered to take my case in hand for one hundred
+dollars, but I had not the money to give him. I then sent to New York
+for a lawyer whom I knew, and when he came to see me he took the same
+view of the case that Elizabeth and I did; that is, that the long
+separation between my first wife and myself, and my presumed ignorance
+as to whether she was alive or dead, gave me full liberty to marry
+again. At least, he thought any court would consider it an extenuating
+circumstance, and he promised to be present at my trial and aid me all
+he could.
+
+I lay in Newark jail nine months, awaiting my trial. During that time I
+had almost daily quarrels with the jailor, who abused me shamefully, and
+told me I ought to go to State prison and stay there for life. Once he
+took hold of me and I struck him, for which I was put in the dark cell
+forty-eight hours. At last came my trial. The court appointed counsel
+for me, for I had no money to fee a lawyer, and my New York friend was
+on hand to advise and assist. I lad witnesses to show the length of time
+that had elapsed since my separation from my first wife, and we also
+raised the point as to whether the justice who married me, was really
+a legal justice of the peace or not. The trial occupied two days. I
+suppose all prisoners think so, but the Judge charged against me in
+every point; the jury was out two hours, and then came in for advice on
+a doubtful question; the judge gave them another blast against me, and
+an hour after they came in with a verdict of "guilty." I went back to
+jail and two days afterwards was brought up for sentence which was--"ten
+years at hard labor in the State prison at Trenton."
+
+Good heavens! All this for being courted and won by a widow!
+
+The day following, I was taken in irons to Trenton. The Warden of
+the prison, who wanted to console me, said that, for the offence, my
+sentence was an awful one, and that he didn't believe I would be obliged
+to serve out half of it. As I felt then, I did not believe I should live
+out one-third of it. After I had gone through the routine of questions,
+and had been put in the prison uniform, a cap was drawn down over my
+face, as if I was about to be hung, and I was led, thus blind-folded,
+around and around, evidently to confuse me, with regard to the interior
+of the prison--in case I might ever have any idea of breaking out. At
+last I was brought to a cell door and the cap was taken off. There were,
+properly no "cells" in this prison--at least I never saw any; but good
+sized rooms for two prisoners, not only to live in but to work in. I
+found myself in a room with a man who was weaving carpets, and I was at
+once instructed in the art of winding yarn on bobbins for him--in fact,
+I was to be his "bobbin-boy."
+
+I pursued this monotonous occupation for two months, when I told the
+keeper I did not like that business, and wanted to try something that
+had a little more variety in it. Whereupon he put me at the cane chair
+bottoming business, which gave me another room and another chum, and I
+remained at this work while I was in the prison. In three weeks I could
+bottom one chair, while my mate was bottoming nine or ten as his day's
+work; but I told the keeper I did not mean to work hard, or work at all,
+if I could help it. He was a very nice fellow and he only laughed and
+let me do as I pleased. Indeed, I could not complain of my treatment
+in any respect; I had a good clean room, good bed, and the fare was
+wholesome and abundant. But then, there was that terrible, terrible
+sentence of ten long years of this kind of life, if I should live
+through it.
+
+After I had been in prison nearly seven months, one day a merchant
+tailor whom I well knew in Newark, and who made my clothes, including
+my wedding suit when I married the Widow Roberts, came to see me. The
+legislature was in session and he was a member of the Senate. He knew
+all the circumstances of my case, and was present at my trial. After the
+first salutation, he laughingly said:
+
+"Well, Doctor, those are not quite as nice clothes as I used to furnish
+you with."
+
+"No," I replied, "but perhaps they are more durable."
+
+After some other chaff and chat, he made me tell him all about my first
+marriage and subsequent separation, and after talking awhile he went
+away, promising to see me soon. I looked upon this only as a friendly
+visit, for which I was grateful; and attached no great importance to it.
+But he came again in a few days, and after some general conversation, he
+told me that there was a movement on foot in my favor, which might bring
+the best of news to me; that he had not only talked with his friends in
+the legislature, and enlisted their sympathy and assistance, but he had
+laid the whole circumstances, from beginning to end, before Governor
+Price; that the Governor would visit the prison shortly, and then I must
+do my best in pleading my own cause.
+
+In a day or two the Governor came, and I had an opportunity to relate
+my story. I told him all about my first unfortunate marriage, and the
+separation. He said that he knew the facts, and also that he had lately
+received a letter from my oldest son on the subject, and had read it
+with great interest. I then appealed to the Governor for his clemency;
+my sentence was an outrageously severe one, and seemed almost prompted
+by private malice; I implored him to pardon me; I went down on my knees
+before him, and asked his mercy. He told me to be encouraged; that he
+would be in the prison again in a few days, and he would see me. He then
+went away.
+
+I at once drew up a petition which my friend in the Senate circulated
+in the legislature for signatures, and afterwards sent it to Newark,
+securing some of the best names in that city. It was then returned to
+me, and two weeks afterwards when the Governor came again to the prison
+I presented it to him, and he put it in his pocket.
+
+In two days' time, Governor Price sent my pardon into the prison. The
+Warden came and told me of it, and said he would let me out in an hour.
+Then came a keeper who once more put the cap over my face and led me
+around the interior--I was willingly led now--till he brought me to a
+room where he gave me my own clothes which I put on, and with a kind
+parting word, and five dollars from the Warden, I was soon in the
+street, once more a free man. My sentence of ten years had been
+fulfilled by an imprisonment of exactly seven months.
+
+I went and called on Governor Price to thank him for his great goodness
+towards me. He received me kindly, talked to me for some time, and gave
+me some good advice and a little money. With this and the five dollars I
+received from the Warden of the prison I started for New York.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII. ON THE KEEN SCENT.
+
+GOOD RESOLUTIONS--ENJOYING FREEDOM--GOING AFTER A CRAZY MAN--THE
+OLD TEMPTER IN A NEW FORM--MARY GORDON--MY NEW "COUSIN"--ENGAGED
+AGAIN--VISIT TO THE OLD FOLKS AT HOME--ANOTHER MARRIAGE--STARTING FOR
+OHIO--CHANGE OF PLANS--DOMESTIC QUARRELS--UNPLEASANT STORIES ABOUT
+MARY--BOUND OVER TO KEEP THE PEACE--ANOTHER ARREST FOR BIGAMY--A
+SUDDEN FLIGHT--SECRETED THREE WEEKS IN A FARM HOUSE--RECAPTURED AT
+CONCORD--ESCAPED ONCE MORE--TRAVELING ON THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD--IN
+CANADA.
+
+
+
+It would seem as if, by this time, I had had enough of miscellaneous
+marrying and the imprisonment that almost invariably followed. I had
+told Governor Price, when I first implored him for pardon, that if he
+would release me I would begin a new life, and endeavor to be in all
+respects a better man. I honestly meant to make every effort to be so,
+and on my stay to New York I made numberless vows for my own future
+good behavior. I bound myself over, as it were, to keep the pace--my own
+peace and quiet especially--and became my own surety. That I could not
+have had a poorer bondsman, subsequent events proved to my sorrow. But I
+started fairly, and meant to let liquor alone; to attend strictly to my
+medical business, which I always managed to make profitable, and above
+all, to have nothing to do with women in the love-making or matrimonial
+way.
+
+With those good resolutions I arrived in New York and went to my old
+hotel in Courtland Street, where I was well known and was well received.
+My trunk, which I had left there sixteen months before, was safe, and
+I had a good suit of clothes on my back--the clothes I took off when
+I went to prison in Trenton--and which were returned to me when I came
+away. I went to a friend who loaned me some money, and I remained two or
+three days in town to try my new-found freedom, going about the city,
+visiting places of amusement, enjoying myself very much, and keeping, so
+far, the good resolutions I had formed.
+
+From New York I went to Troy, and at the hotel where I stopped I became
+acquainted with a woman who told me that her husband was in the Insane
+Asylum at Brattleboro, Vt. She was going to see him, and if he was fit
+to be removed, she proposed to take him home, with her. I told her
+of the success I had had in taking care of two men at Newbury and
+Montgomery; and how I had traveled about the country with them, and with
+the most beneficial results to my patients. She was much interested,
+inquired into the particulars, and finally thought the plan would be a
+favorable one for her husband. She asked me to go with her to see him,
+and said that if he was in condition to travel he should go about with
+me if he would; at any rate, if he came out of the Asylum she would put
+him under my care. We went together to Brattleboro, and the very day we
+arrived her husband was taken in an apoplectic fit from which he did not
+recover. She carried home his corpse, and I lost my expected patient.
+
+But I must have something to do for my daily support, and so I went to
+work and very soon sold some medicines and recipes, and secured a few
+patients. I also visited the adjoining villages, and in a few weeks
+I had a very good practice. I might have lived here quietly and made
+money. Nobody knew anything of my former history, my marriages or my
+misfortunes, and I was doing well, with a daily increasing business.
+And so I went on for nearly three months, gaining new acquaintances, and
+extending my practice every day.
+
+Then came the old tempter in a new form, and my matrimonial monomania,
+which I hoped was cured forever, broke out afresh. One day, at the
+public house where I lived, I saw a fine girl from New Hampshire, with
+whom I became acquainted--so easily, so far as she was concerned--that I
+ought to have been warned to have nothing to do with her; but, as usual,
+in such cases, my common sense left me, and I was infatuated enough to
+fancy that I was in love.
+
+Mary Gordon was the daughter of a farmer living near Keene, N. H., and
+was a handsome girl about twenty years of age. She was going, she told
+me, to visit some friends in Bennington, and would be there about a
+month, during which time, if I was in that vicinity, she hoped I would
+come and see her. We parted very lovingly, and when she had been in
+Bennington a few days she wrote to me, setting a time for me to visit
+her; but in business in Brattleboro was too good to leave, and I so
+wrote to her. Whereupon, in another week, she came back to Brattleboro
+and proposed to finish the remainder of her visit there, thus blinding
+her friends at home who would think she was all the while at Bennington.
+
+Our brief acquaintance when she was at the house before, attracted no
+particular attention, and when she came now I told the landlord that she
+was my cousin, and he gave her a room and I paid her bills. The cousin
+business was a full cover to our intimacy; she sat next to me at the
+table, rode about with me to see my patients, and when I went to places
+near by to sell medicine, and we were almost constantly together. Of
+course, we were engaged to be married, and that very soon.
+
+In a fortnight after her arrival I went home with her to her father's
+farm near Keene, and she told her mother that we were "engaged." The old
+folks thought they would like to know me a little better, but she said
+we were old friends, she knew me thoroughly, and meant to marry me.
+There was no further objection on the part of her parents, and in the
+few days following she and her mother were busily engaged in preparing
+her clothes and outfit.
+
+I then announced my intention of returning to Brattleboro to settle up
+my business in that place, and she declared she would go with me; I
+was sure to be lonesome; she might help me about my bills, and so on.
+Strange as it may seem, her parents made no objection to her going,
+though I was to be absent a fortnight, and was not to be married till
+I came back. So we went together, and I and my "cousin" put up at the
+hotel we had lately left. For two weeks I was busy in making my final
+visits to my patients acquaintances, she generally going with me every
+day.
+
+At the end of that time we went back to Keene, and in three weeks we
+were married in her father's house, the old folks making a great wedding
+for us, which was attended by all the neighbors and friends of the
+family. We stayed at home two weeks, and meanwhile arranged our plans
+for the future. We proposed to go out to Ohio, where she had some
+relatives, and settle down. She had seven hundred dollars in bank in
+Keene which she drew, and we started on our journey. We went to Troy,
+where we stayed a few days, and during that time we both concluded that
+we would not go West, but return to Keene and live in the town instead
+of on the farm, so that I could open an office and practice there.
+
+So we went back to her home again, but before I completed my plans for
+settling down in Keene, Mary and I had several quarrels which were worse
+than mere ordinary matrimonial squabbles. Two or three young men in
+Keene, with whom I had become acquainted, twitted me with marrying Mary,
+and told me enough about her to convince me that her former life had not
+been altogether what it should have been. I had been too blinded by
+her beauty when I first saw her in Brattleboro, to notice how extremely
+easily she was won. Her parents, too, were wonderfully willing, if not
+eager, to marry her to me. All these things came to me now, and we had
+some very lively conversations on the subject, in which the old folks
+joined, siding with their daughter of course. By and by the girl went
+to Keene and made a complaint that she was afraid of her life, and I was
+brought before a magistrate and put under bonds of four hundred dollars
+to keep the peace. I gave a man fifty dollars to go bail for me, and
+then, instead of going out to the farm with Mary, I went to the hotel in
+Keene.
+
+The well-known character of the girl, my marriage to her, the brief
+honeymoon, the quarrels and the cause of the same, were all too tempting
+material not to be served up in a paragraph, and as I expected and
+feared, out came the whole story in the Keene paper.
+
+This was copied in other journals, and presently came letters to the
+family and to other persons in the place, giving some account of my
+former adventures and marriages. Of this however I knew nothing, till
+one day, while I was at the hotel, I was suddenly arrested for bigamy.
+But I was used to this kind of arrest by this time, and I went before
+the magistrate with my mind made up that I must suffer again for my
+matrimonial monomania.
+
+It was just after dinner when I was arrested, and the examination, which
+was a long one, continued till evening. Every one in the magistrate's
+office was tired out with it, I especially, and so I took a favorable
+opportunity to leave the premises. I bolted for the door, ran down
+stairs into the street, and was well out of town before the astonished
+magistrate, stunned constable, and amazed spectators realized that I had
+gone.
+
+Whether they than set out in pursuit of me I never knew, I only know
+they did not catch me. I ran till I came to the house of a farmer whom
+I had been attending for some ailment, and hurriedly narrating the
+situation, I offered him one hundred dollars if he would secrete me till
+the hue and cry was over and I could safely get away. I think he would
+have done it from good will, but the hundred dollar bill I offered him
+made the matter sure. He put my money into his pocket, and he put me
+into a dark closet, not more than five feet square, and locked me in.
+
+I stayed in that man's house, never going out of doors, for more than
+three weeks, and did my best to board out my hundred dollars. The day
+after my flight the whole neighborhood was searched, that is, the woods,
+roads, and adjacent villages. They never thought of looking in a house,
+particularly in a house so near the town; and, as I heard from my
+protector, they telegraphed and advertised far and near for me.
+
+I anticipated all this, and for this very reason I remained quietly
+where I was, in an unsuspected house, and with my dark closet to retire
+to whenever any one came in; and gossiping neighbors coming in almost
+every hour, kept me in that hole nearly half the time. I heard my own
+story told in that house at least fifty times, and in fifty different
+ways.
+
+At last, when I thought it was safe, one night my host harnessed up his
+horses and carried me some miles on my way to Concord. He drove as far
+as he dared, for he wanted to get back home by daylight, so that his
+expedition might excite no suspicion. Twenty miles away from Keene he
+set me down in the road, and, bidding him "good-bye," I began my march
+toward Concord. When I arrived there, almost the first man I saw in the
+street was a doctor from Keene. I did not think he saw me, but he did,
+as I soon found out, for while I was waiting at the depot to take the
+cars to the north, I was arrested.
+
+The Keene doctor owed me a grudge for interfering, as he deemed it; with
+his regular practice, and the moment he saw me he put an officer on my
+trail. I thought it was safe here to take the cars, for I was footsore
+and weary, nor did I get away from Keene as fast and as far as I wanted
+to. I should have succeeded but for that doctor.
+
+When the officer brought me before a justice, the doctor was a willing
+witness to declare that I was a fugitive from justice, and he stated the
+circumstances of my escape. So I was sent back to Keene under charge of
+the very officer who arrested me at the depot.
+
+I would not give this officer's name if I could remember it, but he was
+a fine fellow, and was exceedingly impressible. For instance, on our
+arrival at Keene, he allowed me to go to the hotel and pack my trunk to
+be forwarded to Meredith Bridge by express. He then handed me over to
+the authorities, and I was immediately taken before the magistrate from
+whom I had previously escaped, the Concord officer accompanying the
+Keene officer who had charge of me.
+
+The examination was short; I was bound over in the sum of one thousand
+dollars to take my trial for bigamy. On my way to jail I persuaded the
+Concord officer--with a hundred dollar bill which I slipped into his
+hand--to induce the other officer to go with me to the hotel under
+pretense of looking after my things, and getting what would be necessary
+for my comfort in jail. My Concord friend kept the other officer down
+stairs--in the bar-room, I presume--while I went to my room. I put a
+single shirt in my pocket; the distance from my window to the ground
+was not more than twelve or fifteen feet, and I let myself down from the
+window sill and then dropped.
+
+I was out of the yard, into the street, and out of town in less than no
+time. It was already evening, and everything favored my escape. I had
+no idea of spending months in jail at Keene, and months more, perhaps
+years, in the New Hampshire State Prison. All my past bitter experiences
+of wretched prison life urged me to flight.
+
+And fly I did. No stopping at the friendly farmer's, my former refuge,
+this time; that would be too great a risk. No showing of myself in any
+town or village where the telegraph might have conveyed a description
+of my person. I traveled night and day on foot, and more at night than
+during the day, taking by-roads, lying by in the woods, sleeping in
+barns, and getting my meals in out-of-the-way farm houses.
+
+I had plenty of money; but this kind of travelling is inexpensive, and,
+paying twenty-five cents for one or two meals a day, as I dared to get
+them, and sleeping in barns or under haystacks for nothing, my purse
+did not materially diminish. I was a good walker, and in the course of
+a week from the night when I left Keene, I found myself in Biddeford,
+Maine.
+
+There was some sense of security in being in another State, and here I
+ventured to take the cars for Portland, where I staid two days, sending
+in the meantime for my trunk from Meredith Bridge, and getting it by
+express. Of course it went to a fictitious address at Meredith, and it
+came to me under the same name which I had registered in my hotel at
+Portland.
+
+I did not mean to stay there long. My departure was hastened by the
+advice of a man who knew me, and told he also knew my New Hampshire
+scrape, and that I had better leave Portland as soon as possible. Half
+an hour after this good advice I was on my way by cars to Canada. In
+Canada I stayed in different small towns near the border, and "kept
+moving," till I thought the New Hampshire matter had blown over a
+little, or at least till they had given me up as a "gone case," and I
+then reappeared in Troy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX. MARRYING TWO MILLINERS.
+
+BACK IN VERMONT--FRESH TEMPTATIONS--MARGARET BRADLEY--WINE AND
+WOMEN--A MOCK MARRIAGE IN TROY--THE FALSE CERTIFICATE--MEDICINE
+AND MILLINERY--ELIZA GURNSEY--A SPREE AT SARATOGA--MARRYING ANOTHER
+MILLINER--AGAIN ARRESTED OR BIGAMY--IN JAIL ELEVEN MONTHS--A TEDIOUS
+TRIAL--FOUND GUILTY--APPEAL TO SUPREME COURT--TRYING TO BREAK OUT OF
+JAIL--A GOVERNOR'S PROMISE--SECOND TRIAL--SENTENCE TO THREE YEARS'
+IMPRISONMENT.
+
+
+
+From Troy I went, first to Newburyport, Mass., where I had some
+business, and where I remained a week, and then returned to Troy again.
+Next I went to Bennington, Vt., to sell medicines and practice, and I
+found enough to occupy me there for full two months. From Bennington to
+Rutland, selling medicines on the way, and at Rutland I intended to stay
+for some time. My oldest son was there well established in the medical
+business, and I thought that both of us together might extend a wide
+practice and make a great deal of money.
+
+No doubt we might have done so, if I had minded my medical business
+only, and had let matrimonial matters alone. I had just got rid of a
+worthless woman in New Hampshire with a very narrow escape from State
+prison. But, as my readers know by this time, all experience, even the
+bitterest, was utterly thrown away upon me; I seemed to get out of one
+scrape only to walk, with my eyes open, straight into another.
+
+At the hotel where I went to board, there was temporarily staying a
+woman, about thirty-two years old, Margaret Bradly, by name, who kept a
+large millinery establishment in town. I became acquainted with her, and
+she told me that she owned a house in the place, in which she and her
+mother lived; but her mother had gone away on a visit, and as she did
+not like to live alone she had come to the hotel to stay for a few days
+till her mother returned. Margaret was a fascinating woman; she knew it,
+and it was my miserable fate to become intimate, altogether too intimate
+with this designing milliner.
+
+I went to her store every day, sometimes two or three times a day, and
+she always had in her backroom, wine or something stronger to treat me
+with, and in the evening I saw her at the hotel. When her mother came
+back, and Margaret opened her house again, I was a constant visitor. I
+was once more caught; I was in love.
+
+Matters went on in this way for several weeks, when one evening I told
+her that I was going next day to Troy on business, and she said she
+wanted to go there to buy some goods, and that she would gladly take the
+opportunity to go with me, if I would let her. Of course, I was only too
+happy; and the next day I and my son, and she and one of the young women
+in her employ, who was to assist her in selecting goods, started for
+Troy. When I called for her, just as we were leaving the house, the old
+lady, her mother, called out:
+
+"Margaret, don't you get married before you come back."
+
+"I guess I will," was Margaret's answer, and we went, a very jovial
+party of four, to Troy and put up at the Girard House, where we had
+dinner together, and drank a good deal of wine. After dinner my son and
+myself went to attend to our business, she and her young woman going to
+make their purchases, and arranging to meet us at a restaurant at half
+past four o'clock, when we would lunch preparatory to returning to
+Rutland.
+
+We met at the appointed place and hour, and had a very lively lunch
+indeed, an orgie in fact, with not only enough to eat, but altogether
+too much to drink. I honestly think the two women could have laid me and
+my son under the table, and would have done it, if we had not looked out
+for ourselves; as it was, we all drank a great deal and were very merry.
+We were in a room by ourselves, and when we had been there nearly an
+hour, it occurred to Margaret that it would be a good idea to humor the
+old lady's dry joke about the danger of our getting married during this
+visit to Troy.
+
+"Henry," said she to my son; "Go out and ask the woman who keeps the
+saloon where you can get a blank marriage certificate, and then get one
+and bring it here, and we'll have some fun."
+
+We were all just drunk enough to see that there was a joke in it, and
+we urged the boy to go. He went to the woman, who directed him to a
+stationer's opposite, and presently he came in with a blank marriage
+certificate. We called for pen and ink and he sat down and filled out
+the blank form putting in my name and Margaret Bradley's, signing it
+with some odd name I have forgotten as that of the clergyman performing
+the ceremony. He then signed his own name as a witness to the marriage,
+and the young woman who was with us also witnessed it with her
+signature. We had a great deal of fun over it, then more wine, and then
+it was time for us to hurry to the depot to take the six o'clock train
+for Rutland.
+
+Reaching home at about eleven o'clock at night, we found the old lady
+up, and waiting for Margaret. We went in and Margaret's first words
+were:
+
+"Well, mother! I'm married; I told you, you know, I thought I should be;
+and here's my certificate."
+
+The mother expressed no surprise--she knew her daughter better than
+I did, then--but quietly congratulated her, while I said not a single
+word. My son went to see his companion home, and, as I had not achieved
+this latest greatness, but had it thrust upon me, I and my new found
+"wife" went to our room. The next day I removed from the hotel to
+Margaret's house and remained there during my residence in Rutland, she
+introducing me to her friends as her husband, and seeming to consider it
+an established fact.
+
+Three weeks after this mock marriage, however, I told Margaret that I
+was going to travel about the State a while to sell my medicines, and
+that I might be absent for some time. She made no objections, and as I
+was going with my own team she asked me to take some mantillas and a few
+other goods which were a little out of fashion, and see if I could not
+sell them for her. To be sure I would, and we parted on the best of
+terms.
+
+Behold rue now, not only a medical man and a marrying man, but also
+a man milliner. When I could not dispose of my medicines, I tried
+mantillas, and in the course of my tour I sold the whole of Margaret's
+wares, faithfully remitting to her the money for the same. I think she
+would have put her whole stock of goods on me to work off in the same
+way; but I never gave her the opportunity to do so.
+
+My journeying brought me at last to Montpelier where I proposed to stay
+awhile and see if I could establish a practice. I had disposed of my
+millinery goods and had nothing to attend to but my medicines--alas that
+my professional acquirements as a marrying man should again have been
+called in requisition. But it was to be. It was my fate to fall into the
+hands of another milliner.
+
+"Insatiate monster! would not one suffice?"
+
+It seems not. There was a milliner at Rutland whose family and, friends
+all believed to be my wife, though she knew she was not; and here in
+Montpelier, was ready waiting, like a spider for a fly, another milliner
+who was about to enmesh me in the matrimonial net. I had not been in
+the place a week before I became acquainted with Eliza Gurnsey. I could
+hardly help it, for she lived in the hotel where I stopped, and although
+she was full thirty-five years old, she was altogether the most
+attractive woman in the house. She was agreeable, good-looking,
+intelligent, and what the vernacular calls "smart." At all events, she
+was much too smart for me, as I soon found out.
+
+She had a considerable millinery establishment which she and her younger
+sister carried on, employing several women, and she was reputed to
+be well off. Strange as it may seem in the light of after events, she
+actually belonged to the church and was a regular attendant at the
+services. But no woman in town was more talked about, and precisely what
+sort of a woman she was may be estimated from the fact that I had known
+her but little more than a week, when she proposed that she, her sister
+and I should go to Saratoga together, and have a good time for a day or
+two.
+
+I was fairly fascinated with the woman and I consented. The younger
+sister was taken with us, I thought at first as a cover, I knew
+afterwards as a confederate, and Eliza paid all the bills, which were
+by no means small ones, of the entire trip. We stopped in Saratoga at a
+hotel, which is now in very different hands, but which was then kept
+by proprietors who, in addition to a most excellent table and
+accommodations, afforded their guests the opportunity, if they desired
+it, of attending prayers every night and morning in one of the parlors.
+This may have been the inducement which made Eliza insist upon going to
+this house, but I doubt it.
+
+For our stay at Saratoga, three or four days, was one wild revel. We
+rode about, got drunk, went to the Lake, came back to the hotel, and
+the second day we were there, Eliza sent her sister for a Presbyterian
+minister, whose address she had somehow secured, and this minister came
+to the hotel and married us. I presume I consented, I don't know, for I
+was too much under the effect of liquor to know much of anything. I have
+an indistinct recollection of some sort of a ceremony, and afterwards
+Eliza showed me a certificate--no Troy affair, but a genuine document
+signed by a minister residing in Saratoga, and witnessed by her sister
+and some one in the hotel who had been called in. But the whole was like
+a dream to me; it was the plot of an infamous woman to endeavor to make
+herself respectable by means of a marriage, no matter to whom or how
+that marriage was effected.
+
+Meanwhile, the Montpelier papers had the whole story, one of them
+publishing a glowing account of my elopement with Miss Gurnsey, and the
+facts of our marriage at Saratoga was duly chronicled. This paper fell
+into the hands of Miss Bradley, at Rutland, and as she claimed to be my
+wife, and had parted with me only a little while before, when I went
+out to peddle medicines and millinery, her feelings can be imagined. She
+read the story and then aroused all Rutland. I had not been back from
+Saratoga half an hour before I was arrested in the public house in
+Montpelier and taken before a magistrate, on complaint of Miss Bradley,
+of Rutland, that I was guilty of bigamy.
+
+The examination was a long one, and as the facts which were then shown
+appeared afterwards in my trial they need not be noted now. I had two
+first-rate lawyers, but for all that, and with the plainest showing
+that Margaret Bradley had no claim whatever to be considered my wife, I
+was bound over in the sum of three thousand dollars to appear for
+trial, and was sent to jail. There was a tremendous excitement about the
+matter, and the whole town seemed interested.
+
+To jail I went, Eliza going with me, and insisting upon staying; but the
+jailer would not let her, nor was she permitted to visit me during my
+entire stay there, at least she got in to see me but once. I made
+every effort to get bail, but was unsuccessful. Eight long weary months
+elapsed before my trial came on, and all this while I was in jail. My
+trial lasted a week. The Bradley woman knew she was no more married to
+me than she was to the man in the moon; but she swore stoutly that we
+were actually wedded according to the certificate. On the other hand,
+my son swore to all the facts about the Troy spree, and his buying and
+filling out the certificate, which showed for itself that, excepting the
+signature of the young woman who also witnessed it, it was entirely in
+Henry's handwriting. I should have got along well enough so far as
+the Bradley woman was concerned; but the prosecution had been put in
+possession of all the facts relative to my first and worst marriage, and
+the whole matter came up in this case. The District Attorney had sent
+everywhere, as far even as Illinois, for witness with regard to that
+marriage. It seemed as if all Vermont was against me. I have heard that
+with the cost of witnesses and other expenses, my trial cost the state
+more than five thousand dollars. My three lawyers could not save me.
+After a week's trial the case went to the jury, and in four hours they
+returned a verdict of "guilty."
+
+My counsel instantly appealed the case to the Supreme Court, and,
+meanwhile I went back to jail where I remained three months more. A few
+days after I returned to jail a friend of mine managed to furnish me
+with files and saws, and I went industriously to work at the gratings
+of my window to saw my way out. I could work only at night, when the
+keepers were away, and I covered the traces of my cuttings by filling in
+with tallow. In two months I had everything in readiness for my escape.
+An hour's more sawing at the bars would set me free. But just at that
+time the Governor of the State, Fletcher, made a visit to the jail.
+I told him all about my case. He assured me, after hearing all the
+circumstances, that if I should be convicted and sentenced, he would
+surely pardon me in the course of six or eight weeks. Trusting in this
+promise, I made no further effort to escape though I could have done
+so easily any night; but rather than run the risk of recapture, and a
+heavier sentence if I should be convicted, I awaited the chances of the
+court, and looked beyond for the clemency of the Governor.
+
+Well, finally my case came up in the Supreme Court. It only occupied
+a day, and the result was that I was sentenced for three years in the
+State prison. I was remanded to jail, and five days from that time I was
+taken from Montpelier to Windsor.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X. PRISON-LIFE IN VERMONT.
+
+ENTERING PRISON--THE SCYTHE SNATH BUSINESS--BLISTERED HANDS--I
+LEARN NOTHING--THREAT TO KILL THE SHOP--KEEPER--LOCKSMITHING--OPEN
+REBELLION--SIX WEEKS IN THE DUNGEON--ESCAPE OF A PRISONER--IN THE
+DUNGEON AGAIN--THE MAD MAN, HALL--HE ATTEMPTS TO MURDER THE DEPUTY--I
+SAVE MOREY'S LIFE--HOWLING IN THE BLACK HOLE--TAKING OFF HALL'S
+IRONS--A GHASTLY SPECTACLE--A PRISON FUNERAL--I AM LET ALONE--BETTER
+TREATMENT--THE FULL TERM OF MY IMPRISONMENT.
+
+
+
+We arrived at Windsor and I was safely inside of the prison at three
+o'clock in the afternoon. Warden Harlow met me with a joke, to the
+effect that, had it not been for my handcuffs he should have taken the
+officer who brought me, to be the prisoner, I was so much the better
+dressed of the two. He then talked very seriously to me for a long time.
+He was sorry, and surprised, he said, to see a man of my appearance
+brought to such a place for such a crime; he could not understand how a
+person of my evident intelligence should get into such a scrape.
+
+I told him that he understood it as well as I did, at all events; that
+I could not conceive why I should get into these difficulties, one
+after the other; but that I believed I was a crazy man on this one
+subject--matrimonial monomania; that when I had gone through with one
+of these scrapes, and had suffered the severe punishment that was almost
+certain to follow, the whole was like a dream to me--a nightmare and
+nothing more. With regard to what was before me in this prison I
+should try and behave myself, and make the best of the situation; but I
+notified the Warden that I did not mean to do one bit of work if I could
+help it.
+
+He took me inside, where my fine clothes were taken away, and I. was
+dressed in the usual particolored prison uniform. I was told the rules,
+and was warned that if I did not observe them it would go hard with
+me. Then followed twenty-four hours solitary confinement, and the next
+afternoon I was taken from my cell to a shop in which scythe snaths were
+made.
+
+It had transpired during my trial at Montpelier, that when I was a young
+man, I was a blacksmith by trade. This information had been transmitted
+to prison and I was at once put to work making heel rings. It was some
+years since I had worked at a forge and handled a hammer. Consequently,
+in three or four days, my hands were terribly blistered, and as the
+Warden happened to come into the shop, I showed them to him, and quietly
+told him that I would do that work no longer. He told me that I must do
+it; he would make me do it. I answered that he might kill me, or punish
+me in any way he pleased, but he could not make me do that kind of
+labor, and I threw down my hammer and refused to work a moment longer.
+
+The Warden left me and sent Deputy Warden Morey to try me. He approached
+me in a kindly way, and I showed my blistered hands to him. He thought
+that was the way to "toughen" me. I thought not, and said so, and,
+moreover, told him I would never make another heel ring in that prison,
+and I never did.
+
+He sent me to my cell and I stayed there a week, till my hands were
+well. Then the Deputy came to me and asked me if I was willing to learn
+to hew out scythe snaths in the rough for the shavers, who finished
+them? I said I would try. I went into the shop and was shown how the
+work was to be done. Every man was expected to hew out fifty snaths in a
+day. In three or four days the shop-keeper came and overlooked me while
+I was working in my bungling way, and said if I couldn't do better than
+that I must clear out of his shop and do something else. My reply was
+that I did not understand the business, and had no desire or intention
+to learn it. He sent for the Deputy Warden, who came and expressed
+the opinion that I could not do anything. I said I was willing to do
+anything I could understand.
+
+"Do you understand anything?" asked the Deputy.
+
+"Well, some things, marrying for instance," was my answer.
+
+"I want no joking or blackguardism about this matter," said the Deputy;
+"them simple fact is, you've got to work; if you don't we'll make you."
+
+So I kept on at hewing, making no improvement, and in a day or two
+more the shopkeeper undertook to show me how the work should be done. I
+protested I never could learn it.
+
+"You don't try; and I have a good mind to punish you."
+
+The moment the shop-keeper said it I dropped the snath, raised my
+axe, and told him that if he came one step nearer to me I would make
+mincemeat of him. He thought it was advisable to stay where he was; but
+one of the prison-keepers was in the shop, and as he came toward me I
+warned him that he had better keep away.
+
+All the men in the shop were ready to break out in insubordination; when
+I threatened the shop keeper and the guard, they cheered; the Deputy
+Warden was soon on the ground; he stood in the doorway a moment, and
+then, in a kind tone called me to him. I had no immediate quarrel with
+him, and so I dropped my axe and went to him. He told me that there
+was no use of "making a muss" there, it incited the other prisoners to
+insubordination, and was sure to bring severe punishment upon myself.
+"Go and get your cap and coat," said he "and come with me."
+
+"But if you are going to put me into that black hole of yours," I
+exclaimed, "I won't go; you'll have to draw me there or kill me on the
+way."
+
+He promised he would not put me in the dungeon, he was only going to
+put me in my cell, he said, and to my cell I went, willingly enough,
+and stayed there a week, during which time I suppose everyone of my
+shopmates thought I was in the dungeon, undergoing severe punishment for
+my rebellions conduct.
+
+I had learned now the worst lesson which a prisoner can learn--that is,
+that my keepers were afraid of me. To a limited extent, it is true, I
+was now my own master and keeper. In a few days Deputy Morey came to
+me and asked me if I was "willing" to come out and work. I was sick
+of solitary confinement, and longed to see the faces of men, even
+prisoners: so I told him if I could get any work I could do I was
+willing to try it, and would do as well as I knew how. He asked me if I
+knew anything of locksmithing? I told him I had some taste for it, and
+if he would show me his job I would let him see what I could do.
+
+The fact is, I was a very fair amateur locksmith, and had quite
+a fondness for fixing, picking, and fussing generally over locks.
+Accordingly, when he gave me a lock to work upon to make it "play
+easier," as he described it, I did the job so satisfactorily that I had
+nearly every lock in the prison to take off and operate upon, if it was
+nothing more than to clean and oil one. This business occupied my
+entire time and attention for nearly three months. Then I repaired iron
+bedsteads, did other iron work, and I was the general tinker of the
+prison.
+
+It came into my head, however, one day, that I might as well do nothing.
+The prison fare was indescribably bad, almost as bad as the jail fare at
+Easton. We lived upon the poorest possible salt beef for dinner, varied
+now and then with plucks and such stuff from the slaughter houses, with
+nothing but bread and rye coffee for breakfast and supper, and mush and
+molasses perhaps twice a week.
+
+I was daily abused, too, by the Warden, his Deputy, and his keepers.
+They looked upon me as an ugly, insubordinate, refractory, rebellious
+rascal, who was ready to kill any of them, and, worst of all, who would
+not work. I determined to confirm their minds in the latter supposition,
+and so one day I threw down my tools and refused to do another thing.
+
+They dragged me to the dungeon and thrust me in. It was a wretched dark
+hole, with a little dirty straw in one corner to lie upon. My entire
+food and drink was bread and water. The man who brought it never spoke
+to me. His face was the only one I saw during the livelong day. Day and
+night were alike to me; I lost the run of time; but at long intervals,
+once in eight or ten days, I suppose, the Deputy came to this hole and
+asked me if I would come out and work.
+
+"No, no!" I always answered, "never!" Then I paced the stone floor in
+the dark, or lay on my straw. I lay there till my hips were worn raw.
+No human being can conceive the agony, the suffering endured in this
+dungeon. At last I was nearly blind, and was scarcely able to stand up.
+I presume that the attendant who brought my daily dole of bread and my
+cup of water, reported my condition. One day the door opened and I was
+ordered out. They were obliged to bring me out; I was so reduced that I
+was but the shadow of myself. They meant to cure my obstinacy or to kill
+me, and had not quite succeeded in doing either.
+
+There was no use in asking me if I would go to work then; I was just
+alive. A few days in my own cell, in the daylight, and with something
+beside bread and water to eat, partially restored me. I was then taken
+into the shop where the snaths were finished by scraping and varnishing,
+the lightest part of the work, but I would not learn, would not do,
+would not try to do anything at all. They gave me up. The whole struggle
+nearly killed me, but I beat them. I was turned into the halls and told
+to do what I could, which, I knew well enough, meant what I would.
+
+After that I worked about the halls and yard, sometimes sweeping, and
+again carrying something, or doing errands for the keepers from one part
+of the prison to another. I was what theatrical managers call a general
+utility man, and, not at all strangely, for it is human nature, now
+that I could do what I pleased, I pleased to do a great deal, and was
+tolerably useful, and far more agreeable than I had been in the past.
+
+There was a young fellow, twenty-two years of age, in one of the cells,
+serving out a sentence of six years. When I was sweeping around I used
+to stop and talk to him every day. One day he was missing. He had been
+supposed to be sick or asleep for several hours, for apparently lie
+lay in bed, and was lying very still. But that was only an ingeniously
+constructed dummy. The young man himself had made a hole under his bed
+into an adjoining vacant cell, the door of which stood open. He had
+crawled through his hole, come out of the vacant cell door, and gone up
+to the prison garret, where he found some old pieces of rope. These he
+tied together, and getting out at the cupola upon the roof, he managed
+to let himself down on the outside of the building and got away. He was
+never recaptured. The Warden said that some one must have told him about
+the adjoining vacant cell, with its always open door, else how would the
+young man have known it?
+
+I was accused of imparting this valuable information, and I suffered
+four weeks' confinement in that horrible dungeon on the mere suspicion.
+This made ten weeks in all of my prison-life in a hole in which I
+suffered so that I hoped I should die there.
+
+One of the prisoners was a desperate man, named Hall. He was a convicted
+murderer, and was sentenced for life. He too, worked about in the prison
+and the yards, dragging or carrying a heavy ball and chain. When bundles
+of snaths were to be carried from one shop to the other in the various
+processes of finishing, Hall had to do it, and to carry his ball and
+chain as well, so that he was loaded like a pack-horse. No pack-horse
+was ever so abused.
+
+Of course he was ugly; the wardens and the keepers knew it, and
+generally kept away from him.
+
+I talked with him more than once, and he told me that with better
+treatment he should be a better man. "Look at the loads which are put on
+me every day," he would say; as if this ball and chain were not as much
+as I can carry; and this for life, for life!
+
+One day when Hall and I were working together in the prison, Deputy
+Warden Morey came in and said something to him, and in a moment the man
+sprung upon him. He had secured somehow, perhaps he had picked it up in
+the yard, a pocket knife, and with this he stabbed the Warden, striking
+him in the shoulder, arm, and where he could.
+
+Morey was a man sixty-five years of age, and he made such resistance
+as he could, crying out loudly for help. I turned, ran to Hall, and with
+one blow of my fist knocked him nearly senseless; then help came and we
+secured the mad man. Morey was profuse in protestations of gratitude to
+me for saving his life.
+
+There was a great excitement over this attempt to murder the Deputy, and
+for a few hours, with wardens and keepers, I was a hero. I had been in
+the prison more than a year, and was generally regarded as one of the
+worst prisoners, one of the "hardest cases;" a mere chance had suddenly
+made me one of the most commendable men within those dreary walls. As
+for Hall, he was taken to the dungeon and securely chained by the feet
+to a ring in the center of the stone floor. There is no doubt whatever
+that the man was a raving maniac. He howled night and day so that he
+could be heard everywhere in the prison--"Murder, murder! they are
+murdering me in this black hole; why don't they take me out and kill
+me?"
+
+The Warden said it could not be helped; that the man must be kept there;
+he was dangerous to himself and others; the dark cell was the only place
+for him. So Hall stayed there and howled, his cries growing weaker from
+day to day; by-and-by we heard him only at intervals, and after that
+not at all.
+
+One morning there was a little knot of men around the open dungeon door,
+the Deputy Warden and two or three keepers. Mr. Morey called to me to go
+and get the tools and come there and take off Hall's irons. I went into
+the cell and in a few minutes I unfastened his feet from the ring;
+then I took the shackles off his limbs. I thought he held his legs very
+stiff, but knew he was obstinate, and only wondered he was so quiet.
+
+Somebody brought in a candle and I looked at Hall's face. I never saw a
+more ghastly sight. The blood from his mouth and nostrils had clotted
+on the lower part of his face, and his wild eyes, fixed and glassy, were
+staring at the top wall of the dungeon. He must have been dead several
+hours. The Deputy and the rest knew he was dead--the man who carried in
+the bread and water told them--me it came with a shock from which I did
+not soon recover.
+
+They buried Hall in the little graveyard which was in the yard of the
+prison. An Episcopal clergyman, who was chaplain of the prison, read the
+burial service over him. The prisoners were brought out to attend the
+homely funeral. The ball and chain, all the personal property left by
+Hall, were put aside for the next murderer sentenced for life, or for
+the next "ugly" prisoner. "If I were only treated better, and not abused
+so, I should be a better man." This is what Hall used to say to me
+whenever he had an opportunity. The last and worst and best in that
+prison had been done for him now.
+
+From the day when I rescued Morey from the hands of Hall, his whole
+manner changed towards me, and he treated me with great kindness,
+frequently bringing me a cup of tea or coffee, and something good to
+eat. He also promised to present the circumstances of the Hall affair to
+the Governor, and to urge my pardon, but I do not think he ever did so,
+at least I heard nothing of it. When I pressed the matter upon Morey's
+attention he said it would do no good till I had served out half my
+sentence, and then he would see what could be done.
+
+I served half my sentence, and then the other half, every day of it. But
+during the last two years I had very little to complain of except the
+loss of my liberty. I was put into the cook shop where I could get
+better food, and I did pretty much what I pleased. By general consent
+I was let alone. They had found out that ill usage only made me "ugly,"
+while kindness made me at least behave myself. And so the three weary
+years of my confinement were on to an end.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI. ON THE TRAMP.
+
+THE DAY OF MY DELIVERANCE--OUT OF CLOTHES--SHARING WITH A BEGGAR--A
+GOOD FRIEND--TRAMPING THROUGH THE SNOW--WEARY WALKS--TRUSTING TO
+LUCK--COMFORT AT CONCORD--AT MEREDITH BRIDGE--THE BLAISDELLS--LAST
+OF THE "BLOSSOM" BUSINESS--MAKING MONEY AT PORTSMOUTH--REVISITING
+WINDSOR--AN ASTONISHED WARDEN--MAKING FRIENDS OF OLD ENEMIES--INSPECTING
+THE PRISON--GOING TO PORT JERVIS.
+
+
+
+At last the happy day of my deliverance came. The penalty for pretending
+to marry one milliner and for being married by another milliner was
+paid. My sentence was fulfilled. I had looked forward to this day for
+months. Of all my jail and prison life in different States, this in
+Vermont was the hardest, the most severe. My obstinacy, no doubt, did
+much at first to enhance my sufferings, and it was the accident only
+of my saving Morey's life that made the last part of my imprisonment
+a little more tolerable. When I was preparing to go, it was discovered
+that the fine suit of clothes I wore into the prison had been given by
+mistake or design to some one else, and my silk hat and calf-skin boots
+had gone with the clothes. But never mind! I would have gone out into
+the world in rags--my liberty was all I wanted then. The Warden gave me
+one of his own old coats, a ragged pair of pantaloons, and a new pair
+of brogan shoes. He also gave me three dollars, which was precisely a
+dollar a year for my services, and this was more than I ever meant to
+earn there. Thus equipped and supplied I was sent out into the streets
+of Windsor.
+
+I had not gone half a mile before I met a poor old woman whom I had
+known very well in Rutland. She recognized me at once, though I know I
+was sadly changed for the worse. She was on her way to Fall River, where
+she had relatives, and where she hoped for help, but had no money to pay
+her fare, so I divided my small stock with her, and that left me just
+one dollar and a half with which to begin the world again. I went down
+to the bridge and the toll--gatherer gave me as much as I could eat,
+twenty five cents in money, and a pocket-full of food to carry with me.
+I was heading, footing rather, for Meredith Bridge in New Hampshire.
+It was in the month of December; and I was poorly clad and without an
+overcoat. I must have walked fifteen miles that afternoon, and just at
+nightfall I came to a wayside public house and ventured to go in. As
+I stood by the fire, the landlord stepped up and slapping me on the
+shoulder, said:
+
+"Friend, you look as if you were in trouble; step up and have something
+to drink."
+
+I gladly accepted the invitation to partake of the first glass of liquor
+I had tasted in three years. It was something, too, everything to be
+addressed thus kindly. I told this worthy landlord my whole story; how
+I had been trapped by the two milliners, and how I had subsequently
+suffered. He had read something about it in the papers; he felt as if
+he knew me; he certainly was sorry for me; and he proved his sympathy
+by giving me what then seemed to me the best supper I had ever eaten,
+a good bed, a good breakfast, a package of provisions to carry with me,
+and then sent me on my way with a comparatively light heart.
+
+It rained, snowed, and drizzled all day long. I tramped through the wet
+snow ankle deep, but made nearly forty miles before night, and then came
+to a public house which I knew well. When I was in the bar-room drying
+myself and warming my wet and half-frozen feet, I could not but think
+how, only a few years before, I had put up at that very house, with a
+fine horse and buggy of my own in the stable, and plenty of money in my
+pocket. The landlord's face was familiar enough, but he did not know
+me, nor, under my changed circumstances, did I desire that he should.
+Supper, lodging, and breakfast nearly exhausted my small money capital;
+I was worn and weary, too, and the next day was able to walk but twenty
+miles, all told. On the way, at noon I went into a farm house to warm
+myself. The woman had just baked a short-cake which stood on the
+hearth, toward which I must have cast longing eyes, for the farmer said:
+
+"Have you had your dinner, man?"
+
+"No, and I have no money to buy any."
+
+"Well, you don't need money here. Wife, put that short-cake and some
+butter on the table; now, my man, fall to and eat as much as you like."
+
+I was very hungry, and I declare I ate the whole of that short-cake.
+I told these people that I had been in better circumstances, and that
+I was not always the poor, ragged, hungry wretch I appeared then. They
+made we welcome to what I had eaten and when I went away filled my
+pockets with food. At night I was about thirty miles above Concord. I
+had no money, but trusting to luck, I got on the cars--the conductor
+came, and when he found I had no ticket, he said he must put me off. It
+was a bitter night and I told him I should be sure to freeze to death.
+A gentleman who heard the conversation at once paid my fare, for which I
+expressed my grateful thanks, and I went to Concord.
+
+On my arrival I went to a hotel and told the landlord I wanted to stay
+there till the next day, when a conductor whom I knew would be going to
+Meredith Bridge; that I was going with him, and that he would probably
+pay my bill at the hotel. "All right," said the landlord, and he gave me
+my supper and a room. The next noon my friend, the conductor, came and
+when I first spoke to him he did not recognize me; I told him who I
+was, but to ask me no questions as to how I came to appear in those old
+clothes, and to be so poor; I wanted to borrow five dollars, and to go
+with him to Meredith Bridge. He greeted me very cordially, handed me a
+ten-dollar Bill--twice as much as I asked for--said he was not going to
+the Bridge till next day, and told me meanwhile, to go to the hotel and
+make myself comfortable.
+
+I went back to the hotel, paid my bill, stayed there that day and night,
+and the next morning "deadheaded," with my friend the conductor to
+Meredith Bridge. Everybody knew me there. The hotel-keeper made me
+welcome to his house, and said I could stay as long as I liked.
+
+"Say, dew ye ever cure anybody, Doctor?" asked my old friend, the
+landlord, and he laughed and nudged me in the ribs, and asked me to take
+some of his medicine from the bar, which I immediately did.
+
+I was at home now. But the object of my visit was to see if I could
+not collect some of my old bills in that neighborhood, amounting in the
+aggregate to several hundred dollars. They were indeed old bills of five
+or six years' standing, and I had very little hope of collecting much
+money. I went first to Lake Village, and called on Mr. John Blaisdell,
+the husband of the woman whom I had cured of the dropsy, in accordance,
+as she believed at the time, with her prophetic dream. Blaisdell didn't
+know me at first; then he wanted to know what my bill was; I told him
+one hundred dollars, to say nothing of six years' interest; he said he
+had no money, though he was regarded as a rich man, and in fact was.
+
+"But sir," said I, "you see me and how poor I am. Give me something on
+account. I am so poor that I even borrowed this overcoat from the
+tailor in the village, that I might present a little more respectable
+appearance when I called on my old patients to try to collect some of my
+old bills. Please to give me something."
+
+But he had no money. He would pay for the overcoat; I might tell the
+tailor so; and afterwards he gave me a pair of boots and an old shirt.
+This was the fruit which my "blossom" of years before brought at last.
+I saw Mrs. Blaisdell, but she said she could do nothing for me. She had
+forgotten what I had done for her.
+
+Of all my bills in that vicinity, with a week's dunning, I collected
+only three dollars; but a good friend of mine, Sheriff Hill, went around
+and succeeded in making up a purse of twenty dollars which he put into
+my hands just as I was going away. My old landlord wanted nothing for my
+week's board; all he wanted was to know "if I ever cured anybody;" and
+when I told him I did, "sometimes" he insisted upon my taking more of
+his medicine, and he put up a good bottle of it for me to carry with me
+on my journey.
+
+With my twenty dollars I went to Portsmouth, where I speedily felt that
+I was among old and true friends. I had not been there a day before I
+was called upon to take care of a young man who was sick, and after a
+few weeks charge of him I received in addition to my board and expenses,
+three hundred dollars. I was now enabled to clothe myself handsomely,
+and I did so and went to Newburyport, where I remained several weeks and
+made a great deal of money.
+
+In the spring I went to White River Junction, and while I was in
+the hotel taking a drink with some friends, who should come into the
+bar-room but the Lake Village tailor from whom I had borrowed the
+overcoat which I had even then on my back. I was about to thank him for
+his kindness to me when he took me aside and said reproachfully:
+
+"Doctor, you wore away my overcoat and this is it, I think."
+
+"Good heavens! didn't John Blaisdell pay you for the coat? He told me he
+would; its little enough out of what he owes me."
+
+"He never said a word to me about it," was the reply. I told the tailor
+the circumstances; I did not like to let him to know that I had then
+about seven hundred dollars in my pocket; I wished to appear poor
+as long as there was a chance to collect any of my Meredith and Lake
+Village bills; so I offered him three dollars to take back the coat. He
+willingly consented and that was the last of the "Blossom" business with
+the Blaisdells.
+
+I was bound not to leave this part of the country without revisiting
+Windsor, and I went there, stopping at the best house in the town, and,
+I fear, "putting on airs" a little. I had suffered so much in this
+place that I wanted to see if there was any enjoyment to be had there.
+Satisfaction there was, certainly--the satisfaction one feels in going
+back under the most favorable circumstances, to a spot where he has
+endured the very depths of misery. After a good dinner I set out to
+visit the prison. Here was the very spot in the street where, only a few
+months before, I, a ragged beggar, had divided my mere morsel of money
+with the poor woman from Rutland. What change in my circumstances those
+few months had wrought. I had recovered my health which bad food, ill
+usage, and imprisonment had broken down, and was in the best physical
+condition. The warden's old coat and pantaloons had been exchanged for
+the finest clothes that money would buy. I had a good gold watch and
+several hundred dollars in my pocket. I had seen many of my old friends,
+and knew that they were still my friends, and I was fully restored to
+my old position. My three years' imprisonment was only a blank in my
+existence; I had begun life again and afresh, precisely where I left off
+before I fell into the hands of the two Vermont milliners.
+
+All this was very pleasant to reflect upon; but do not believe I thought
+even then, that the reason for this change in my circumstances, and
+changes for the better, was simply because I had minded my business and
+had let women alone.
+
+When I called on Warden Harlow, and courteously asked to be shown about
+the prison, he got up and was ready to comply with my request, when he
+looked me full in the face and started back in amazement:
+
+"Well, I declare! Is this you?"
+
+"Yes, Warden Harlow; but I want you to understand that while I am here
+I do not intend to do a bit of work, and you can't make me. You may as
+well give it up first as last; I won't work anyhow."
+
+The Warden laughed heartily, and sent for Deputy Morey who came in to
+"see a gentleman," and was much astonished to find the prisoner, who,
+two years before, had saved his life from the hands and knife of the
+madman Hall. I spent a very pleasant hour with my old enemies, and
+I took occasion to give them a hint or two with regard to the proper
+treatment of prisoners. I then made the rounds of the prison, and went
+into the dungeon where I had passed so many wretched hours for weeks
+at a time. The warden and his deputy congratulated me upon my improved
+appearance and prospects, and hoped that my whole future career would be
+equally prosperous.
+
+Nor did I forget to call up my friend in need and friend indeed in
+the toll-house at the bridge. I stayed three or four days in Windsor,
+finding it really a charming place, and I was almost sorry to leave it.
+But my only purpose in going there, that is to revisit the prison, was
+accomplished, and I started for New York, and went from there to Port
+Jervis, where I met my eldest son.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII. ATTEMPT TO KIDNAP SARAH SCHEIMER'S BOY.
+
+STARTING TO SEE SARAH--THE LONG SEPARATION--WHAT I LEARNED ABOUT
+HER--HER DRUNKEN HUSBAND--CHANGE OF PLAN--A SUDDENLY--FORMED
+SCHEME--I FIND SARAH'S SON--THE FIRST INTERVIEW--RESOLVE TO
+KIDNAP THE BOY--REMONSTRANCES OF MY SON HENRY--THE ATTEMPT--A
+DESPERATE STRUGGLE--THE RESCUE--ARREST OF HENRY--MY FLIGHT
+INTO PENNSYLVANIA--SENDING ASSISTANCE TO MY SON--RETURN TO PORT
+JERVIS--BAILING HENRY--HIS RETURN TO BELVIDERE--HE IS BOUND OVER TO BE
+TRIED FOR KIDNAPPING--MY FOLLY.
+
+
+
+After I had been in Port Jervis three or four days I matured a plan that
+had long been forcing in my mind, and that was, to try and see Sarah
+Scheimer once more, or at least to find out something about her and
+about our son. The boy, if he was living, must be about ten years of
+age. I had never seen him; nor, since the night when I was taken out of
+bed and carried to the Easton jail had I ever seen Sarah, or even heard
+from her, except by the message the Methodist minister brought to me
+from her the day after I was released from jail. In the long interval
+I had married the Newark widow, and had served a brief term in the New
+Jersey State prison for doing it; I had married Mary Gordon, in New
+Hampshire, and had run away, not only from her, but from constables and
+the prison in that state; the mock marriage with the Rutland woman at
+Troy, and the altogether too real marriage with the Montpelier milliner
+had followed; I had spent three wretched years in the Vermont prison at
+Windsor; and numerous other exciting adventures had checkered my career.
+What had happened to Sarah and her son during all this while? There was
+not a week in the whole time since our sudden separation when I had
+not thought of Sarah; and now I was near her old home, with means at
+my command, leisure on my hands, and I was determined to know something
+about her and the child.
+
+So long a time had elapsed and I was so changed in my personal
+appearance that I had little fear of being recognized by any one in
+Pennsylvania or the adjoining part of New Jersey, who would molest me.
+The old matters must have been pretty much forgotten by all but the very
+few who were immediately interested in them. It was safe to make the
+venture at all events, and, I resolved to make the venture to see and
+learn what I could.
+
+I had the idea in my mind that if Sarah was alive and well, and free,
+I should be able to induce her to fulfil her promise to come to me, and
+that we might go somewhere and settle down and live happily together. At
+any rate, I would try to see her and our child.
+
+I did not communicate a word of all this to my son Henry. I told him I
+was going to New Jersey to visit some friends, to look for business, and
+I would like to have him accompany me. He consented; I hired a horse and
+carriage, and one bright morning we started. I had no friends to visit,
+no business to do, except to see Sarah--the dearest and best--loved of
+all my wives.
+
+When we reached Water Gap I found an old acquaintance in the landlord of
+the hotel, and I told him where I was going, and what I hoped to do. He
+knew the Scheimers, knew all that had happened eleven years before, and
+he told me that Sarah had married again, seven years ago, and was the
+mother of two more children. She lived on a farm, half a mile from
+Oxford, and her husband who had married her for her money, and had
+been urged upon her by her parents, was a shiftless, worthless, drunken
+fellow. The boy--my boy--was alive and well, and was with his mother.
+
+This intelligence changed, or rather made definite my plan. Sarah was
+nothing to me now. The boy was everything. I must see him, and if he was
+what he was represented to be, a bright little fellow, I determined that
+he should no longer remain in the hands and under the control of his
+drunken step-father, but I would carry him away with me if I could. It
+was nearly noon when we arrived at Oxford, and going to my old quarters,
+I found that "Boston Yankee," had long since left the place. There was
+a new landlord, and I saw no familiar faces about the house; all was new
+and strange to me. I made inquiries, and soon found out that Sarah's
+boy went to a school in town not far from the hotel, and I went there to
+"prospect," leaving Henry at the public house.
+
+It was noon now, and fifty or more boys were trooping out of school. I
+carefully scanned the throng. The old proverb has it that it is a wise
+child who knows its own father; but it is not so difficult for a father
+to know his own children. The moment I put my eyes on Sarah's son, I
+knew him; he was the very image of me; I could have picked him out of a
+thousand. I beckoned to the boy and he came to me. He was barefoot; and
+his very toes betrayed him, for they "overrode" just as mine did; but
+his face was enough and would have been evidence of his identity as my
+son in any court in Christendom.
+
+"Do you know me, my little man?" said I.
+
+"No, sir, I do not."
+
+"Do you know what was your mother's name before she was married?"
+
+"Yes Sir, it was Sarah Scheimer."
+
+"Do you know that the man with whom you live is not your rather?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Sir, I know that; mother always told me so; but she never told
+me who my father was."
+
+"My son," said I taking him in my arms, "I am your father; wait about
+here a few minutes till I can go and get my horse and carriage, and I
+will take you to ride."
+
+I ran over to the hotel; ordered my horse to be brought to the door at
+once, got into the wagon with Henry and told him that Sarah Scheimer's
+boy was just across the way, and that I was going to carry him off with
+us. Henry implored me not to do it, and said it was dangerous. I never
+stopped to think of danger when my will impelled me. I did not know that
+at that moment, men who had noticed my excited manner, and who knew I
+was "up to something," were watching me from the hotel piazza. I drove
+over where the boy was waiting, called him to me, and Henry held the
+reins while I put out my hands to pull the boy into the carriage. Two of
+the men who were watching me came at once, one of them taking the horse
+by the head, and the other coming to me and demanding:
+
+"What are you going to do with that boy?"
+
+"Take him with me; he is my son."
+
+"No you don't," said the man, and he laid hold of the boy and attempted
+to pull him out of the wagon. I also seized the lad who began to scream.
+In the struggle for possession, I caught up the whip and struck the man
+with the handle, felling him to the ground. All the while the other man
+was shouting for assistance. The crowd gathered. The boy was roughly
+torn from me, in spite of my efforts to retain him. Henry was thoroughly
+alarmed; and while the mob were trying to pull us also out of the
+carriage he whipped the horse till he sprang through the crowd and was
+well off in a moment.
+
+"Get out of town as fast as you can drive," said I to Henry.
+
+We were not half an hour in reaching Belvidere. There I stopped
+to breathe the horse a few minutes, and Henry insisted that he was
+starving, and must have something to eat; he would go into the hotel he
+said, and get some dinner. I told him it was madness to do it; but he
+would not move an inch further on the road till he had some dinner. He
+went into the dining room, and I paced up and down the piazza, nervous,
+anxious, fearing pursuit, dreading capture, well knowing what would
+happen when those Jerseymen should get hold of me and find out who I
+was. At that moment I saw the pursuers coming rapidly up the road. I
+called to my son:
+
+"Henry, Henry! for God's sake come out here, quick!"
+
+But he thought I was only trying to frighten him so as to hurry him away
+from his dinner, and get him on the road, and he paid no attention to my
+summons. I knew that I was the man who was wanted, and, without waiting
+for Henry, I jumped into my wagon and drove off. I just escaped, that's
+all. The moment I left, my pursuers were at the door. I looked back and
+saw them drag my son out of the house, and take him away with them. I
+turned my horse's head towards the Belvidere Bridge. All the country
+about there was as familiar to me as the county I was born in. I knew
+every road, and I had no fear of being caught. Once across the bridge
+and in Pennsylvania, and I was comparatively safe, unless I myself
+should be kidnapped as I was at midnight, only a little way from this
+very spot, eleven years before. Here was an opportunity now to rest and
+reflect. Confound those Scheimers and all their blood! Was I never to
+see the end of the scrapes that family would get me into, or which I was
+to get myself into, on account of the Scheimers?
+
+Surely they could not harm Henry. They might have taken him merely in
+the hope of drawing me back to try to clear him, or rescue him, and then
+they would get hold of the man they wanted. My son had done nothing. He
+did not even know of the contemplated abduction till five minutes before
+it was attempted, and then he protested against it. He only held the
+horse when I pulled the lad into the wagon.
+
+Nothing showed so completely the consciousness of his own entire
+innocence in the matter, as the coolness with which he sat down to his
+dinner in Belvidere, and insisted upon remaining when I warned him of
+our danger. These facts shown, any magistrate before whom he might be
+taken, must let him go at once. I thought, perhaps, if I waited a few
+hours where I was, he would be sure to rejoin me, and we could then
+return to Port Jervis without Sarah's son to be sure; but, otherwise, no
+worse off than we were when we set out on this ill-starred expedition
+in the morning.
+
+All this seemed so plain to me that I sent over to Belvidere for a
+lawyer, who soon came across the bridge to see me, and to him I narrated
+the whole circumstances of the case from, beginning to end. I asked him
+if I had not a right to carry off the boy whom I knew to be my own? His
+reply was that he would not stop to discuss that question; all he knew
+was that there was a great hue and cry after me for kidnapping the boy;
+that my son was seized and held for aiding and abetting in the attempted
+abduction; and he advised me, as a friend, to leave that part of the
+country as soon as possible. I gave him fifty dollars to look after
+Henry's case. He thought, considering how little, and that little
+involuntarily, my son had to do with the matter, he might be got off; he
+would do all he could for him anyhow. He then returned to Belvidere, and
+I took the road north.
+
+When I arrived at Port Jervis I detailed to my landlord the whole
+occurrences of the day--what I had tried to do, and how miserably I had
+failed, and asked him what was to be done next. He said "nothing;" we
+could only wait and see what happened.
+
+The day following I received a letter from the Belvidere lawyer
+informing me that Henry had been examined, had been bound over in
+the sum of three hundred dollars to take his trial on a charge of
+kidnapping, and he was then in the county jail. I at once showed this
+letter to the landlord, and he offered to go down with another man to
+Belvidere and see about the bail. I gave him three hundred dollars,
+which he took with him and put into the bands of a resident there who
+became bail, and in a day or two Henry came back with them to Port
+Jervis.
+
+My son was frantic; he had been roughly treated; and to think, he said,
+that he should be thrust into the common jail and kept there two days
+with all sorts of scoundrels, when he had done actually nothing! He
+would go back there, stand his trial, and prove his innocence, if
+he died for it. He reproached me for attempting to carry off the boy
+against his advice and warning; he knew we should into trouble; but he
+would show them that he had nothing to do with it; that's what he would
+do.
+
+Now this was precisely what I did not wish to have him do. A trial of
+this case, even if Henry should come off scott free, would be certain to
+revive the whole of the old Scheimer story, which had nearly died away,
+and which I had no desire to have brought before the public again in
+any way whatever. The bail bond I was willing, eager even to forfeit, if
+that would end the matter. But Henry was sure they couldn't touch him,
+and he meant to have the three hundred dollars returned to me.
+
+Seeing how sensitive the boy was on the subject, and how bent he was
+on proving his innocence, I thought it best to draw him away from the
+immediate locality, and so, in the course of a week, I persuaded him to
+go to New York with me, and we afterward went to Maine for a few weeks
+to sell my medicines. This Maine trip was a most lucrative one, which
+was very fortunate, for the money I made there, to the amount of
+several hundred dollars, was shortly needed for purposes which I did not
+anticipate when I put the money by.
+
+We returned to New York, and I supposed that Henry had given up all idea
+of attempting to "prove his innocence;" indeed we had no conversation
+about the kidnapping affair for several weeks. But he slipped away from
+me. One day I came back to the hotel, and, inquiring for him, was told
+at the office he had left word for me that he had gone to Belvidere. A
+letter from him a day or two afterward confirmed this, to me, unhappy
+intelligence. The time was near at hand for his trial, and he had gone
+and given himself up to the authorities. He wrote to me again that he
+had sent word about his situation to his mother--my first and worst
+wife--and she and his sister were already with him.
+
+Of course it was impossible for me to go there, if there were no other
+reasons, I was too immediately interested in this affair to be present,
+and I had no idea of undergoing a trial and a certain conviction for
+myself. But I sent down a New York lawyer with one hundred dollars,
+directing him to employ council there, and to advise and assist as much
+as he could. Meanwhile, I remained in New York, anxious, it is true, yet
+almost certain that it would be impossible, under the circumstances, to
+convict Henry of the kidnapping for which he was indicted. He had not
+even assisted in the affair, and was sure his counsel would be able to
+so convince the court and jury.
+
+And reviewing the whole matter, now in my cooler moments, this scheme of
+trying to carry away Sarah's son, seemed to be as foolish, useless, and
+mad, as any one of my marrying adventures. Till I picked him out from
+among his schoolmates, I had never seen the child at all. When I started
+from Port Jervis to go down, as I supposed, into Pennsylvania, I had no
+more idea of kidnapping the boy than I had of robbing a sheep-fold.
+It was only when the landlord at Water Gap told me that Sarah had
+remarried, and was wedded to a worthless, drunken husband, that I
+conceived the plan of removing the boy from such associations. I was
+going to bring him up in a respectable manner. Alas! I did not succeed
+even in bringing him away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER WIDOW.
+
+WAITING FOR THE VERDICT--MY SON SENT TO STATE PRISON--WHAT SARAH WOULD
+HAVE DONE--INTERVIEW WITH MY FIRST WIFE--HELP FOR HENRY--THE BIDDEFORD
+WIDOW--HER EFFORT TO MARRY ME--OUR VISIT TO BOSTON--A WARNING--A
+GENEROUS GIFT--HENRY PARDONED--CLOSE OF THE SCHEIMER ACCOUNT--VISIT TO
+ONTARIO COUNTY--MY RICH COUSINS--WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN--MY BIRTH--PLACE
+REVISITED.
+
+
+
+I waited with nervous impatience for the close of the trial in New
+Jersey, when I hoped to welcome my son Henry to New York. It was
+so plain a case, as it seemed to me, and must appear, I thought, to
+everybody, that I hardly doubted his instant acquittal. But very shortly
+the New York lawyer whom I had sent to Belvidere, came back and brought
+terrible news. Henry had been tried, and notwithstanding the fairest
+showing in his favor, he was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months
+imprisonment at Trenton.
+
+As it appeared, it was I really, and not Henry, who was on trial. The
+circumstances of the desperate struggle, and my knocking down one of
+the men with the butt of my whip, were conspicuous in the case. Even
+the little boy was put on the stand, and was made to testify against his
+older half-brother. Henry himself was astounded at the result of the
+trial, and was firmly convinced that instead of "proving his innocence"
+to Jersey jurymen, he had better have let his innocence go by default.
+We never even got back again the three hundred dollars which had been
+put into the hands of the man who went bail for Henry when he was bound
+over for trial. For us, it was bad business from beginning to end.
+
+Henry wrote a letter to me, that just before his trial, before he had
+delivered himself up, and while he was still under bail, he had gone to
+see Sarah Scheimer on the little farm which was bought with her money,
+and was worked, so far as it was worked at all, by her drunken husband.
+The family were even poorer than the landlord at Water Gap had reported.
+Sarah herself was miserable and unhappy. She told Henry, when he
+informed her who he was, that if I had wanted to see her or her son, I
+should have been welcome. She would have been very glad to have had me
+take the boy and clothe him decently; but she could not part with him,
+and would not have let me take him away; still, I could see him at any
+time, and as often as I liked, and the boy should grow up to know and to
+look upon me as his father.
+
+And this, really, was all I desired, all I wanted; and it was all easily
+within my grasp, ready in fact to be put into my hands, and I had gone
+ahead in my usual mad, blundering way, acting, not only without advice,
+but against such advice as came from Henry at the last moment, and had
+alienated the mother from me, lost the boy, and had sent Henry, who was
+wholly innocent, to state prison for eighteen months.
+
+The poor fellow was take to Trenton and was put into the prison where
+I had spent seven months. He was almost crazy when he got there. His
+mother and sister went with him, and took lodgings in the place so as to
+be near him, to render him any assistance that might be in their power.
+
+I had been idle now for some weeks in New York, and I went back to
+Maine, to Biddeford, where I lad a good practice. I picked up a good
+deal of money, and in two months I returned to New York to make a brief
+visit, and to see if something could not be done for the release of
+Henry from prison. At my solicitation a friend of mine wrote to
+Trenton to Henry's mother to come on to New York, and meet me at the
+Metropolitan Hotel on a specified day, to transact some business. She
+came, and we met for the first time in several years. We met now simply
+on business, and there was no expression of sentiment or feeling on
+either side. We cared nothing for each other. I commended her for her
+devotion to Henry, and then told her I believed, if the proper efforts
+were made, he could be pardoned out of prison. I told her what lawyer
+and other persons to see, and how to proceed in the matter. I gave her
+the most minute instructions, and then handed her five hundred dollars
+with which to fee her lawyer, and to pay her and her daughter's living
+expenses in Trenton. She was grateful for the money, and was only too
+glad to go to work for Henry; she would have done it long ago if she had
+only known what to do. We then parted, and I have never seen the woman,
+since that day.
+
+This business transacted, I at once returned to my practice at
+Biddeford. Among my patients was a wealthy widow, "fat, fair, and
+forty," and I had not attended her long before a warm affection sprung
+up between us, and in time, when the widow recovered, we began to think
+we were in love with each other. I confess that I agreed to marry
+her; but it was to be at some distant day--a very distant day as I
+intended--for, strange as it may seem, and as it did seem to me, I had
+at last learned the lesson that I had better let matrimony alone. I had
+married too many wives, widows, milliners, and what not, already,
+and had suffered too severely for so doing. I meant that my Vermont
+imprisonment, the worst of all, should be the last.
+
+So I only "courted" the widow, calling upon her almost every day, and
+I was received and presented to her acquaintances as her affianced
+husband. Her family and immediate friends were violently opposed to the
+match, thereby showing their good sense. I was also informed that they
+knew something of my previous history, and I was warned that I had
+better not undertake to marry the widow. Bless their innocent hearts! I
+had no idea of doing it. I was daily amazed at my own common sense. My
+memory was active now; all my matrimonial mishaps of the past, with all
+the consequences, were ever present to my mind, and never more present
+than when was in the company of the fascinating widow. As for her,
+the more her relatives opposed the match, the more she was bent upon
+marrying me. Her family, she, said, were afraid they were going to lose
+her property, but she would never give them a cent of it, anyhow, and
+she would marry when and whom she pleased.
+
+Not "when," exactly; because, as she protested she would marry me, I
+had something to say about it; I had been run away with by a milliner
+in Vermont, and I had no idea of beings forcibly wedded by a widow in
+Maine. I pleaded that my business was not sufficiently established; I
+was liable to be called away from time to time; I had affairs to arrange
+in New York and elsewhere before I could settle down; and so the happy
+day was put off to an indefinite future time.
+
+By-and-by I had business in Boston, and the widow declared that she
+would go with me; she wanted to visit her friend's there and do some
+shopping; and without making particular mention of her intention to her
+relatives, she went with me, and we were in Boston together more
+than two weeks. At the end of that time she returned to Biddeford and
+notified her friends treat she was married to the doctor, though she had
+no certificate, not even a Troy one, to show for it.
+
+I deemed it advisable not to go back with her, but went to Worcester for
+a while. In a few days I went to Biddeford, keeping somewhat close, for
+I did not care to meet any of the relatives, and at night I called upon
+the widow. She told me that her family had raised a tremendous fuss
+about me, and had learned as much as they, and indeed she, wanted to
+know about my adventures in Vermont and New Hampshire. They had not gone
+back of that, but that was enough. It was dangerous, she told me, for me
+to stay there; I was sure to be arrested; I had better get away from the
+place as soon as possible. We might meet again by-and-by, but unless I
+wanted to be arrested I must leave, the place that very night. She gave
+me seven hundred dollars, pressed the money upon me, and I parted from
+her, returning to Worcester, and going from there to Boston. Besides
+what the widow bad given me, I had made more than one thousand dollars
+in Maine, and was comparatively well off.
+
+Then came the joyful intelligence that Henry was released. His mother
+had worked for him night and day. She bad drawn up a petition, secured
+a large number of sterling signatures, had gone with her counsel to see
+the Governor, had presented the petition and all the facts in the case,
+and the Governor had granted a pardon. Henry served only six months of
+the eighteen for which he was sentenced, and very soon after I received
+word that he was free, he came to me in Boston, stayed a few days, and
+then went home to his mother in Unadilla.
+
+With the release of my son, I considered the Scheimer account closed,
+and I have never made any effort to see Sarah or our boy since that
+time.
+
+From Boston I went to Pittsford, Ontario County, N. Y., where I had many
+friends, who knew nothing about any of my marriages or misfortunes, my
+arrests or imprisonments. I went visiting merely, and enjoyed myself so
+much that I stayed there nearly three months, going about the country,
+and practicing a little among my friends. I was never happier than I was
+during this time. I was free from prisons, free from my wives, and
+free from care. As a matrimonial monomaniac I now looked upon myself as
+cured.
+
+Among the friends whom I visited in Ontario County, and with whom I
+passed several pleasant weeks, were two cousins of mine whom I had not
+seen for many years, since we were children in fact, but who gave me a
+most cordial welcome, and made much of me while I was there. They knew
+absolutely nothing of my unhappy history--no unpleasant rumor even
+respecting me, had ever penetrated that quiet quarter of the State. I
+told them what I pleased of my past career, from boyhood to the present
+time, and to them I was only a tolerably successful doctor, who made
+money enough to live decently and dress well, and who was then suffering
+from overwork and badly in need of recuperation. This, indeed, was the
+ostensible reason for my visit to Ontario. I was somewhat shattered; my
+old prison trials and troubles began to tell upon me. I used to think
+sometimes that I was a little "out of my head;" I certainly was so
+whenever I entered upon one of my matrimonial schemes, and I must have
+been as mad as a March hare when I attempted to kidnap Sarah Scheimer's
+boy. After all the excitement and suffering of the past few years, I
+needed rest, and here I found it.
+
+My cousins were more than well-to-do farmers; they were enormously
+rich in lands and money. Just after the war of 1812, their father,
+my uncle, and my own father, had come to this, then wild and almost
+uninhabited, section of the State to settle. Soon after they arrived
+there my father's wife died, and this loss, with the general loneliness
+of the region, to say nothing of the fever and ague, soon drove my
+father back to Delaware County to his forge for a living, and to the
+day of his death he was nothing more than a hard-working,
+hand-to-mouth-living, common blacksmith.
+
+But my uncle stayed there, and, as time went on, he bought hundreds of
+acres of land for a mere song, which were now immensely valuable, and
+had made his children almost the richest people in that region. My
+Cousins were great farmers, extensive raisers of stock, wool-growers,
+and everything else that could make them prosperous. There seemed to be
+no end to their wealth, and their fiat farms, spread out on every side
+as far as the eye could see.
+
+And if my father had only stayed there, I could not help but think what
+a different life mine might have been. Instead of being the adventurer
+I was, and had been ever since I separated from my first and worst
+wife--doing well, perhaps, for a few weeks or a few months, and then
+blundering into a mad marriage or other difficulty which got me into
+prison; well-to-do to-day and to-morrow a beggar--I, too, might
+have been rich and respectable, and should have, saved myself a world of
+suffering. This was but a passing thought which did not mar my visit,
+or make it less pleasant to me. I went there to be happy, not to be
+miserable, and for three months I was happy indeed.
+
+From there I went to my birthplace in Columbia County, revisiting old
+scenes and the very few old friends and acquaintances who survived, or
+who had not moved away. I spent a month there and thereabouts, and at
+the end of that time I felt full restored to my usual good health, and
+was ready to go to work again, not in the matrimonial way, but in my
+medical business, that was enough for me now.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV. MY OWN SON TRIES TO MURDER ME.
+
+SETTLING DOWN IN MAINE--HENRY'S HEALTH--TOUR THROUGH THE
+SOUTH--SECESSION TIMES--DECEMBER IN NEW ORLEANS--UP THE
+MISSISSIPPI--LEAVING HENRY IN MASSACHUSETTS--BACK IN MAINE AGAIN--RETURN
+TO BOSTON--PROFITABLE HORSE TRADING--PLENTY OF MONEY--MY FIRST WIFE'S
+CHILDREN--HOW THEY HAD BEEN BROUGHT UP--A BAREFACED ROBBERY--ATTEMPT TO
+BLACKMAIL ME--MY SON TRIES TO ROB AND KILL ME--MY RESCUE--LAST OF THE
+YOUNG MAN.
+
+
+
+Where to go, not what to do, was the next question. Wherever I might go
+and establish myself, if only for a few days, or a few weeks, I was sure
+to have almost immediately plenty of patients and customers enough for
+my medicines--this had been my experience always--and unfortunately for
+me, I was almost equally sure to get into some difficulty from which
+escape was not always easy. Looking over the whole ground for a fresh
+start in business, it seemed to me that Maine was the most favorable
+place. Whenever I had been there I had done well; it was one of the very
+few States I had lived in where I had not been in jail or in prison; nor
+had I been married there, though the Biddeford widow did her best to wed
+me, and it is not her fault that she did not succeed in doing it.
+
+To Maine, then, I went, settling down in Augusta, and remaining there
+four months, during which time I had as much as I could possibly attend
+to, and laid by a very considerable sum of money. While I was there
+I heard the most unfavorable reports with regard to the health of my
+eldest son Henry. Prison life at Trenton had broken him down in body
+as well as in spirit, and he had been ill, some of the time seriously,
+nearly all the time since he went to Unadilla. The fact that he was
+entirely innocent of the offence for which he was imprisoned, preyed
+upon his mind, and with the worst results. As these stories reached me
+from week to week, I became anxious and even alarmed about him, and at
+last I left my lucrative business in Augusta and went to New York. I
+could not well go to Unadilla to visit Henry without seeing his mother,
+whom I had no desire to see; so I sent for him to come to me in the
+city if was able to do so. I knew that if medicine or medical attendance
+would benefit him, I should be able to help him.
+
+In a few days he came to me in a most deplorable physical condition. He
+was a mere wreck of his former self. Almost immediately he began to talk
+about the attempt to abduct the boy from Oxford; how innocent he was in
+the matter, and how terribly he had suffered merely because he happened
+to be with me when I rashly endeavored to kidnap the lad. All this went
+through me like a sharp sword. It seemed as if I was the cause, not only
+of great unhappiness to myself, but of pain and misery to all who were
+associated or brought in contact with me. For this poor boy, who had
+endured and suffered so much on my account, I could not do enough. My
+means and time must now be devoted to his recovery, if recovery, was
+possible.
+
+He was weak, but was still able to walk about, and he enjoyed riding
+very much. I kept him with me in the city a week or two, taking daily
+rides to the Park and into the country, and when he felt like going out
+in the evening I made him go to some place of amusement with me. I had
+no other business, and meant to have none, but to take care of Henry,
+and I devoted myself wholly to his comfort and happiness. In a few days
+he had much improved in health and spirits, so much so, that I meditated
+making a long tour with him to the South, hoping that the journey there
+and back again would fully restore him.
+
+Fortunately, my recent Maine business had put me in possession of
+abundant funds, and when I had matured my scheme, and saw that Henry
+was in tolerable condition to travel, I proposed the trip to him, and he
+joyfully assented to my plan. I wanted to get him far away, for awhile,
+from a part of the country which was associated in his mind, more than
+in mine, with so much misery, and he seemed quite as eager to go. Change
+of air and scene I knew would do wonders for him bodily, and would build
+him up again.
+
+We made our preparations and started for the South, going first to
+Baltimore and then on through the Southern States by railroad to New
+Orleans. It was late in the fall of 1860, just before the rebellion,
+when the south was seceding or talking secession, and was already
+preparing for war. Henry's physical condition compelled us to rest
+frequently on the way, and we stopped sometimes for two or three days
+at a time, at nearly every large town or city on the entire route.
+Everywhere there was a great deal of excitement; meetings were held
+nearly every night secession was at fever heat, and there was an
+unbounded expression and manifestation of ill-feeling against the north
+and against northern men. Nevertheless, I was never in any part of
+the Union where I was treated with so much courtesy, consideration and
+genuine kindness as I was there and then. I was going south, simply to
+benefit the invalid who accompanied me; everybody seemed to know it;
+and everybody expressed the tenderest sympathy for my son. Wherever we
+stopped, it seemed as if the people at the hotels, from the landlord
+to the lowest servant, could not do enough for us. At Atlanta, Augusta,
+Mobile, and other places, where we made our stay long enough to get a
+little acquainted, my son and myself were daily taken out to ride, and
+were shown everything of interest that was to be seen. Henry did not
+enjoy this journey more than I did--to me as well as to him, the trip
+was one prolonged pleasure, and by the time we reached New Orleans
+nearly a month after we left New York, my son had so recuperated that I
+had every hope of his speedy and full restoration.
+
+It was the beginnings of winter when we reached New Orleans; but during
+the whole month of December while we remained in that city, winter,
+if indeed it was winter, which we could hardly believe, was only a
+prolongation of the last beautiful autumn days we had left at the north.
+Now Orleans was then at the very height of prosperity; business
+was brisk, money was plenty, the ships of all nations and countless
+steamboats from St. Louis, Cincinnati, Louisville and all points up the
+Mississippi and Ohio rivers lay at the levee. The levee itself, from
+end to end, for miles along the river front, was one mass of merchandise
+which had come to the city, or was awaiting shipment. I had never seen a
+livelier city. Indescribably gay, too, was New Orleans that winter. The
+city was full of strangers; the hotels were thronged; there were balls
+every night; the theatres were crowded, and everybody seemed bent
+on having a good time. With all the rest, there was an extraordinary
+military furor, and militia companies and regiments paraded the streets
+every day, while secession meetings were held in various halls, or in
+the public squares, nearly ever night.
+
+From the St. Charles hotel where we stopped, St. Charles street seemed
+ablaze and alive all night, and densely thronged all day. Sunday brought
+no rest, for Sunday, so far as military parades, amusement and general
+gaiety were concerned, was the liveliest day in the week; and Sunday
+night the theatres were sure to present their best performances and to
+draw their largest audiences. And so, from morning till night, and
+from night till morning again, all was whirl, stir, bustle, business,
+enjoyment, and excitement. To me, unaccustomed as I was to such scenes,
+New York even seemed tame and dull, and slow in comparison with New
+Orleans.
+
+This is a picture of the Crescent City as it presented itself to me and
+to my son in the early part of the winter before the war. No one knew
+or even dreamed of the terrible times that were to come. No one believed
+that war was probable, or even possible; it was well enough, perhaps,
+to prepare for it; but secession was to be an accomplished fact, and
+the North and all the world would quietly acknowledge it. This was the
+general sentiment in the city; though secession, and what would, or what
+might come of it, was the general topic of talk in the hotels, in the
+restaurants, at the theatres, in the streets, everywhere. Now and then
+some southerner with whom I had become acquainted would try to draw me
+out to ascertain my sentiments on the subject, but I always laughed, and
+said good naturedly:
+
+"My dear sir, I didn't come down here to talk about secession, but to
+see if the southern climate would benefit my sick son."
+
+The fact was that I minded my own business, and minded it so well that
+while I was in New Orleans I managed to find a few patients and sold
+recipes and medicines enough to pay the entire expenses of our journey
+thus far, from the North.
+
+Almost every day my son and I drove somewhere up to Carrolton, down to
+the battle-ground, or on the shell road to Lake Ponchartrain. It was a
+month of genuine enjoyment to us both; of profit to me pecuniarily; and
+of the best possible benefit to Henry's health.
+
+Early in January we took passage on one of the finest of the Mississippi
+steamboats for St. Louis. The boat was crowded, and among the passengers
+were a good many merchants, Northern men long resident in New Orleans,
+who thought they saw trouble coming, and accordingly had closed up their
+business in the Crescent City, and were now going North to stay there.
+We had on board, too, the usual complement of gamblers and amateur or
+professional poker-players, who kept the forward saloon near the bar,
+and known in the river vernacular as the "Texas" of the boat, lively all
+day long and well into the night, or rather the next morning. It was ten
+or eleven days before we reached St. Louis. Nothing notable occurred
+on the trip; but day after day, as we proceeded northward, and left
+the soft, sunny south behind us, with the daily increasing coldness and
+wintry weather, Henry seemed to decline by degrees, and gradually to
+lose nearly all that he had gained since we left New York. When we
+reached St. Louis he was seriously sick. I was very sorry we had come
+away so soon in the season, and proposed that we should return and stay
+in the south till spring; but Henry would not consent. There was nothing
+to be done, then, but to hurry on to the east, and when we arrived in
+New York Henry would not go home to his mother in Unadilla, but insisted
+upon accompanying me to Boston. I was willing enough that he should go
+with me, for then I could have him under my exclusive care; but when we
+arrived in Boston he was so overcome by the excitement of travel, and
+was so feeble from fatigue as well as disease, that instead of having
+him go with me to Augusta, as I intended, by the advice of a friend I
+took him into the country where he could be nursed, be quiet, and be
+well taken care of till spring. I left him in good hands, promising
+to come and see him as soon as I could, and then went back to my old
+business in Augusta.
+
+It required a little time to knot the new end of that business to the
+end where I had broken off three months before; but I was soon in full
+practice again and was once more making and saving money. I had no
+matrimonial affair in hand, no temptation in fact, and none but strictly
+professional engagements to fulfil. In Augusta and in several other
+towns which I visited, for the whole of the rest of the winter, I was
+as busy as I could be. Early in the spring I made up my mind to run away
+for a week or two, and arranged my business so that I could go down into
+Massachusetts and visit Henry, hoping, if he was better, to bring him
+back with me to Maine.
+
+Two of my patients in Paris, Maine, had each given me a good horse in
+payment for my attendance upon them and their families, and for what
+medicines I had furnished, and I took these horses with me to sell in
+Boston. I drove them down, putting a good supply of medicines in my
+wagon to sell in towns on the way, and when I arrived in Boston sold out
+the establishment, getting one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the
+wagon, three hundred dollars for one horse, and four hundred dollars
+for the other--a pretty good profit on my time and medicine for the two
+patients--and I brought with me besides about eighteen hundred dollars,
+the net result, above my living expenses, of about three months'
+business in Maine, and what I had done on the way down through
+Massachusetts. I am thus minute about this money because it now devolves
+upon me to show what sort of a family of children my first and worst
+wife had brought up.
+
+Of these children by my first marriage, my eldest son Henry, since he
+had grown up, had been with me nearly as much as he had been with his
+mother, and I loved him as I did my life. Since he became of age, at
+such times when I was not in prison, or otherwise unavoidably separated
+from him, we had been associated in business, and had traveled and lived
+together. I knew all about him; but of the rest of the children I knew
+next to nothing. Shortly after I sold my horses, one day I was in my
+room at the hotel, when word was brought to me that some one in the
+parlor wanted to see me.
+
+I went down and found a young man, about twenty-one years of age, who
+immediately came to me addressing me as "father," and he then presented
+a young woman, about two years older than he was, as his sister and my
+daughter. I had not seen this young gentleman since the time when I had
+carried him off from school and from the farmer to whom he was bound,
+and had clothed him and taken him with me to Amsterdam and Troy,
+subsequently sending him to my half-sister at Sidney. The ragged little
+lad, as I found him, had grown up into a stout, good-looking young man;
+but I had no difficulty in recognizing him, though I was much at loss to
+know the precise object of this visit; so after shaking hands with them,
+and asking then how they were, I next inquired what they wanted?
+
+Well, they had been to see Henry, and he was a great deal better.
+
+I told them I was very glad to hear it, and that I was then on my way to
+visit him, and hoped to see him in a few days, as soon as I could finish
+my business in Boston; if Henry was as well as they reported I should
+bring him away with me.
+
+"But if you are busy here," said my young man, "we can save you both
+time and trouble. We will go to Henry again and settle his bills for
+board and other expenses, and will bring him with us to you at this
+hotel."
+
+This, at the time, really seemed to me a kindly offer; it would enable
+me to stay in Boston and attend to business I had to do, and Henry
+would come there with his brother and sister in a day or two. I at once
+assented to the plan, and taking my well-filled pocket-book from the
+inside breast pocket of my coat, I counted out two hundred and fifty
+dollars and gave them to the young man to pay Henry's board, doctor's
+and other bills, and the necessary car fares for the party. They then
+left me and started, as I supposed, to go after Henry.
+
+But a few days went on and I saw and heard nothing of Henry. At last
+word came to me one day that some one down stairs wanted to see me and I
+told the servant to send him to my room, hoping that it might be Henry.
+But no; it was my young man, of whom I instantly demanded:
+
+"Where is your brother, whom you were to bring to me a week ago? What
+have you done with the money I gave you for his bills?"
+
+"I hadn't been near Henry; sister has gone home; and I've spent the
+money on a spree, every cent of it, here in Boston, and I want more."
+
+"Want more!" I exclaimed in blank amazement:
+
+"Yes, more; and if you don't give it to me, I'll follow you wherever you
+go, and tell people all I know about you."
+
+"You scoundrel," said I, "you come here and rob, not me, but your poor,
+sick brother, and then return and attempt to blackmail me. Get out of
+my sight this instant."
+
+He sprung on me, and made a desperate effort to get my money out of my
+pocket. We had a terrible struggle. He was younger and stronger than
+I was, and as I felt that I was growing weaker I called out loudly for
+help and shouted "Murder!"
+
+The landlord himself came running into the room; I succeeded in tearing
+myself away, from the grasp of my assailant, and the landlord felled
+him to the floor with a chair. He then ran to the door and called to a
+servant to bring a policeman.
+
+"No, don't!" I exclaimed; "Don't arrest the villain, for I can make no
+complaint against him--he is my son!"
+
+But the landlord was bound to have some satisfaction out of the affair;
+so he dragged the young man into the hall and kicked him from the top of
+the stairs to the bottom, where, as soon as he had picked himself up, a
+convenient servant kicked him out into the street. I have never set eyes
+on my young man since his somewhat sudden departure from that hotel.
+
+And when I went to visit my poor Henry a day or two afterwards, I can
+hardly say that I was surprised, though I was indignant to learn that
+his brother and sister had never been near him at all since he had been
+in Massachusetts. They knew where and how he was from his letter's to
+his mother; they knew, too, from the same letters--for I had notified
+Henry--at what time I would be in Boston, and with this information they
+had come on to swindle me. I have no doubt, when the young man came the
+second time to rob me, he would have murdered me, if the landlord had
+not come to my assistance. And this was the youngest son of my first and
+worst wife!!
+
+I found Henry in better condition than I expected, and I took him back
+with me to Augusta. I did not tell him of his brother's attempt to rob
+and kill. Me--it would have been too great a shock for him. He stayed
+with me only a few days and then, complaining of being homesick, he went
+to visit his mother again.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV. A TRUE WIFE AND HOME, AT LAST.
+
+WHERE WERE ALL MY WIVES?--SENSE OF SECURITY--AN IMPRUDENT
+ACQUAINTANCE--MOVING FROM MAINE--MY PROPERTY IN RENSSELAER COUNTY--HOW
+I LIVED--SELLING A RECIPE--ABOUT BUYING A CARPET--NINETEEN
+LAW--SUITS--SUDDEN DEPARTURE FOR THE WEST--A VAGABOND FOR TWO
+YEARS--LIFE IN CALIFORNIA--RETURN TO THE EAST--DIVORCE FROM MY FIRST
+WIFE--A GENUINE MARRIAGE--MY FARM--HOME AT LAST.
+
+
+
+I remained in Maine nearly two years, hardly ever going out of the
+State, except occasionally to Boston on business. Making Augusta my
+residence and headquarters, I practiced in Portland and in nearly all
+the towns and cities in the eastern part of the State. During all this
+time, I behaved myself, in all respects better than I had ever before
+done in any period of my life. I began to look upon myself as a reformed
+man; I had learned to let liquor alone, and was consequently in far
+less, indeed, next to no danger of stepping into the traps in which
+my feet had been so often caught. I may as well confess it--it was
+intoxicating liquor, and that mainly, which had led me into my various
+mad marrying schemes and made me the matrimonial monomaniac and lunatic
+lover that I was for years. What my folly, my insanity caused me to
+suffer, these pages have attempted to portray. I had grown older, wiser,
+and certainly better. I now only devoted myself strictly to my business,
+and I found profit as well as pleasure in doing it.
+
+What had become of all my wives in the meantime, I scarcely knew and
+hardly cared. Of course from time to time I had heard more or less about
+them--at least, a rumor of some sort now and then reached me. About my
+first and worst wife, at intervals I heard something from Henry, who was
+still with her, and who frequently wrote to me when he was well enough
+to do so. Margaret Bradley and Eliza Gurnsey were still carrying on
+the millinery business in Rutland, and in Montpelier, and were no
+doubt weaving other and new webs in hopes of catching fresh flies. Mary
+Gordon, as I learned soon afterwards, was married almost before I had
+fairly escaped from New Hampshire in my flight to Canada, and she had
+gone to California with her new husband. Of the Newark widow I knew
+nothing; but two years of peace, quiet, and freedom from molestation
+in Maine had made me feel quite secure against any present or future
+trouble from my past matrimonial misadventures.
+
+I was living in Maine, prudently I think under an assumed name, and as
+the respectable, and, to my patients and customers, well-known Doctor
+Blank, I was scarcely liable to be recognized at any time or by any
+one as the man who had married so many wives, been in so many jails and
+prisons, and whose exploits had been detailed from time to time in the
+papers.
+
+Nor, all this while, did I have the slightest fear of detection. I
+looked upon myself as a victim rather than as a criminal, and for what
+I had done, and much that I had not done, I had more than paid the
+penalty. So far as all my business transactions were concerned, my
+course had always been honorable, and in my profession, for my cures and
+for my medicines, I enjoyed a good reputation which all my efforts were
+directed to deserve.
+
+Of course, now and then, I met people in Portland, and especially in
+Boston, who had known me in former years, and who knew something of my
+past life; but these were generally my friends who sympathized with my
+sufferings, or who, at least, were willing to blot out the past in my
+better behavior of the present. One day in Boston a young man came up to
+me and said:
+
+"How do you do, Doctor?"
+
+"Quite well," I replied; "but you have the advantage of me; I am sure I
+do not remember you, if I ever knew you."
+
+"You don't remember me! Why, I am the son of the jailer in Montpelier
+with whom you spent so many months before you went to Windsor; I knew
+you in a minute, and Doctor, I've been in Boston a week and have got
+'strapped;' how to get back to Montpelier I don't know, unless you will
+lend me five or six dollars which I will send back to you the moment I
+get home."
+
+"I remember you well, now," said I; "you are the little rascal who
+wouldn't even go and buy me a cigar unless I gave you a dime for doing
+it; and then, sometimes, you cheated me out of my money; I wouldn't lend
+you a dollar now if it would save you from six month's imprisonment in
+your father's filthy jail. Good morning."
+
+And that was the last I saw of him.
+
+I was getting tired of Maine. I had been there longer than I had stayed
+in any place, except in the Vermont State Prison, for the past fifteen
+years, and I began to long for fresh scenes and a fresh field for
+practice. I had accumulated some means, and thought I might take life
+a little easier--make a home for myself somewhere, practicing my
+profession when I wanted to, and at other times enjoying the leisure
+I loved and really needed. So I closed up my business in Augusta and
+Portland, put my money in my pocket, and once more went out into the
+world on a prospecting tour. My first idea was to go to the far West,
+and I went to Troy with the intention of staying there a few days,
+and then bidding farewell to the East forever. The New England States
+presented no attractions to me; I had exhausted Maine, or rather it had
+exhausted me; New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts had too many
+unpleasant associations, if indeed they were safe states for me, with my
+record to live in, and Connecticut I knew very little about. Certainly I
+had no intention of trying to settle in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The
+west was the place; anywhere in the west.
+
+Here was I in Troy, revolving plans in my own mind for migrating to the
+west, just as Mary Gordon and I had done in the very same hotel, only a
+few years before; and in the course of a week I came to exactly the same
+conclusion that Mary and I did--not to go. I heard of a small farm--it
+was a very small one of only twelve acres--which could be bought in
+Rensselaer County, not more than sixteen miles from Albany and Troy.
+I went to see the place, liked it, and bought it for sixteen hundred
+dollars. There was a small but good house and a barn on the place,
+and altogether it was a cheap and desirable property. I got a good
+housekeeper, hired a man, and began to carry on this little farm,
+raising garden vegetables and fruit mainly, and sending them to market
+in Albany and Troy. Generally I took my own stuff to market, and sold
+medicines and recipes as well, and in Albany I had a first rate practice
+which I went to that city to attend to once or twice a week. While
+my man was selling vegetables and fruit--I remember I sold a hundred
+dollars worth of cherries from my farm the first summer--in the market,
+I was Doctor Blank receiving my patients at Stanwix Hall, or calling
+upon them at their residences; and when the day's work was over, my man
+and I rode home in the wagon which had brought us and the garden truck
+early in the morning. On the whole, this kind of life was exceedingly
+satisfactory, and I liked it.
+
+I made frequent expeditions to Saratoga and to other places not far from
+home to attend to cases to which I was called, and to sell medicines;
+and considering that the main object I had in settling in Rensselaer
+County was rest and more leisure than I had enjoyed for some years, I
+had a great deal more to do than I desired. Nevertheless, I might
+have continued to live on my little farm, raising vegetables, picking
+cherries, and practicing medicine in the neighborhood, had not the fate,
+which seemed to insist that I should every little while come before
+a court of justice for something or other, followed me even here. A
+certain hardware dealer in Albany, with whom I had become acquainted,
+proposed to buy one of my recipes, and to go into an extensive
+manufacture of the medicine. He had read and heard of the fortunes that
+had been made in patent medicines, by those who understand the business,
+and he thought he would see if he could not get rich in a year or less
+in the same way.
+
+After some solicitation I sold him the recipe for one thousand dollars,
+receiving six hundred dollars down, and a promise of the balance when
+the first returns from sales of the medicine came in. I also entered
+into a contract to show the man how to make the medicine, and to give
+him such advice and assistance in his new business as I could. My
+hardware friend understood his legitimate business better than he did
+that which he had undertaken, and although be learned how to manufacture
+the medicine he did not know how to sell it; and after trying it a few
+weeks, and doing next to nothing, he turned upon me as the author of his
+misfortunes and sued me for damages.
+
+Incidental to this, and only incidental, is the following: Shortly after
+I purchased my property, as I was very fond of calling my little farm,
+in Rensselaer County, I was in Albany one day when it occurred to
+me that I wanted a carpet for my parlor. I went to the store of a
+well-known carpet-dealer, and asked to be shown some of his goods.
+While I was going through the establishment I came across a man who
+was industriously sewing together the lengths of a cut carpet, and I
+recognized in him one of my fellow convicts at Windsor. He, however, did
+not know me, and I doubt if he could have been convinced of my identity
+as the wretch who plied the broom in the halls of the prison. To him,
+as he glanced at me, I was only a well-dressed gentleman whom the
+proprietor was courteously showing through the establishment in the
+hope of securing a good customer. It was this little circumstance, I
+think--my chance meeting with my old fellow-prisoner, and my changed
+circumstances and appearance which put me beyond recognition by
+him--that prompted me to the somewhat brazen business that followed:
+
+"I only came in to look to-day," I said to the carpet-dealer; "for the
+precise sum of money in my pocket at present is eighteen pence, and no
+more; but if you will cut me off forty yards of that piece of carpeting,
+and trust me for it, I will pay your bill in a few days, as sure as I
+live."
+
+My frank statement with regard to my finances seemed to attract the
+attention of the merchant who laughed and said:
+
+"Well, who are you, anyhow? Where do you live?"
+
+I told him that I was Doctor Blank; that I lived in Rensselaer county
+on a small place of my own; I raised fruit and vegetables for market; I
+cured cancers, dropsy, and other diseases when I could; sold medicines
+readily almost where I would; and was in Albany once or twice a week.
+
+"Measure and cut off the carpet," said he to the clerk who was following
+us, "and put it in the Doctor's wagon"
+
+The bill was about a hundred dollars, and I drove home with the carpet.
+It was nearly six weeks afterwards when I went into the store again, and
+greeted the proprietor. He had seen me but once before and had totally
+forgotten me. I told him I was Doctor Blank, small farmer and large
+medical practitioner of Rensselaer County.
+
+"The devil you are! Why, you're the man that bought a carpet of me a few
+weeks ago; I was wondering what had become of you."
+
+"I'm the man, and I must tell you that the carpet doesn't look well;
+but never mind--here's a hundred dollars, and I want you to receipt the
+bill."
+
+"Now," said I, when he returned the bill to me receipted, "the carpet
+looks firstrate; I never saw a handsomer one in my life."
+
+"Well, you are an odd chap, any how," said the carpet-dealer, laughing,
+and shaking me by the hand. Almost from that moment we were more than
+mere acquaintances, we were fast friends. In the course of the long
+conversation that followed, I told him of my trouble with the hardware
+man--how I had sold him the recipe; that he had failed, from ignorance
+to conduct the business properly, and had sued me for damages.
+
+"I know the man," said my new friend; "let him go ahead and sue and
+be benefited, if he can; meanwhile, do you keep easy; I'll stand by
+you."
+
+And stand by me he did through thick and thin. The hardware man sued me
+no less than nineteen times, and for pretty much everything--damages,
+debt, breach of contract, and what not. With the assistance of a
+lawyer whom my friend recommended to me, I beat my opponent in eighteen
+successive suits; but as fast as one suit was decided he brought
+another, almost before I could get out of the court room. At last he
+carried the case to the Supreme Court, and from there it went to a
+referee. The matter from beginning to end, must have cost him a mint
+of money; but he went on regardless of the costs which he hoped and
+expected to get out of me at last.
+
+My long and painful experience, covering many years, had given me a
+pretty thorough knowledge of the law's uncertainty, as well as the law's
+delay, and very early in the course of the present suit, I had quietly
+disposed of my property in Rensselaer County. I sold the little farm,
+which cost me sixteen hundred dollars, for twenty-one hundred dollars,
+and I had had, besides, the profits of nearly two years' farming and a
+good living from and on the place. I also arranged all my money matters
+in a manner that I felt assured would be satisfactory to me, if not
+to my opponent, and then, following the advice of my friend, the
+carpet-dealer, I let the hardware man sue and be "benefited if he
+could." When, however, the case went finally to a referee who was
+certain, I felt sure, to decide against me, I took no further personal
+interest in the matter, nor have I ever troubled myself to learn the
+filial decision. I made up my mind in a moment and decided that the time
+had come, at last, when it was advisable for me to go to the West.
+
+Westward I went, towards sunset almost, and for the two following years
+I led, I fear, what would be considered a very vagabond life. I went
+to Utah, thinking while I was in Salt Lake City, if they only knew my
+history there I was sure to be elected an apostle, or should be, at any
+rate, a shining light in Mormondom--only I had taken my wives in regular
+succession, and had not assembled the throng together. I pushed across
+the plains, and went to California, remaining a long time in San
+Francisco. This may have been vagabondism, but it was profitable
+vagabondism to me. During this long wandering I held no communication
+with my friends in the East; friends and foes alike had an opportunity
+to forget me, or if they thought of me they did not know whether I was
+dead or alive; they certainly never knew, all the time, where I was;
+and while I was journeying I never once met a man or woman who had
+been acquainted with me in the past. All the time, too, I had plenty of
+money; indeed, when, I returned at last I was richer far than I was when
+I left Albany, and left as the common saying graphically expresses it,
+"between two days." I had my old resources of recipes, medicines and my
+profession, and these I used, and had plenty of opportunity to use, to
+the best advantage. I could have settled in San Francisco for life
+with the certainty of securing a handsome annual income. I never feared
+coming to want. If I had lost my money and all other resources had
+failed, I was not afraid to make a horse-nail or turn a horse-shoe
+with the best blacksmith in California, and I could have got my living,
+as I did for many a year, at the forge and anvil.
+
+But I made more money in other and easier ways, and I made friends. In
+every conceivable way my two years' wandering was of far more benefit to
+me than I dreamed of when I wildly set out for the West without knowing
+exactly where, or for what, I was going. The new country, too, had given
+me, not only a fresh fund of ideas, but a new stock of health--morally
+and physically I was in better condition than I ever was before in
+my life. I had a clear head; a keen sense of my past follies; a vivid
+consciousness of the consequences which such follies, crimes they may be
+called, are almost certain to bring. I flattered myself that I was not
+only a reformed prisoner, but a reformed drunkard, and a thoroughly
+restored matrimonial monomaniac.
+
+And when I returned, at last, to the East, and went once more to visit
+my near and dear friends in Ontario County, I was received as one who
+had come back from the dead. When I had been here a few weeks, and had
+communicated to my cousins so much of the story of my life as I then
+thought advisable, I took good counsel and finally did what I ought to
+have done long years before. I commenced proper legal proceedings for
+a divorce from my first and worst wife. I do not need to dwell upon the
+particulars; it is enough to say, that the woman, who was then living,
+so far from opposing me, aided me all she could, even making affidavit
+to her adultery with the hotel clerk at Bainbridge, long ago, and I
+easily secured my full and complete divorce. Now I was, indeed, a free
+man--all the other wives whom I had married, or who had married me,
+whether I would or no, were as nothing; some were dead and others were
+again married. It may be that this new, and to me strange sense of
+freedom, legitimate freedom, set me to thinking that I might now secure
+a genuine and true wife, who would make a new home happy to me as long
+as we both should live.
+
+Fortune, not fate now, followed me, led me rather and guided my
+footsteps. It was not many months before I met a woman who seemed to me
+in every way calculated to fill the first place in that home which I had
+pictured as a final rest after all my woes and wanderings. From mutual
+esteem our acquaintance soon ripened into mutual love. She was all
+that my heart could desire. I was tolerably well off; my position was
+reputable; my connections were respectable. To us, and to our friends,
+the match seemed a most desirable one. It was no hasty courtship; we
+knew each other for months and learned to know each other well; and with
+true love for each other, we had for each other a genuine respect. I
+frankly told her the whole story of my life as I have now written it.
+She only pitied my misfortunes, pardoned my errors, and, one bright,
+golden, happy autumn day, we were married.
+
+In the northeastern part of the State of New York on the banks of a
+broad and beautiful river, spread out far and near the fertile acres
+of one of the finest farms in the country. It is well stocked and well
+tilled. The surrounding country is charming--game in the woods, and fish
+in the streams afford abundant sport, and the region is far away from
+large cities, and remote even from railroads. I do not know of a more
+delightful place in the whole world to live in. On the farm I speak
+of, a cottage roof covers a peaceful, happy family, where content and
+comfort always seem to reign supreme. A noble woman, a most worthy wife
+is mistress of that house; joyous children move and play among the trees
+that shade the lawns; and the head of the household, the father of the
+family, is the happiest of thee group.
+
+That farm, that family, that cottage, that wife, that happy home are
+mine--all mine. I have found a true wife and a real home at last.
+
+My story is told; and if it should suggest to the reader the moral which
+is too obvious to need rehearsal, one object I had in telling the story
+will have been accomplished.
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Seven Wives and Seven Prisons, by L.A. Abbott
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