 Chapter 9 of Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac. A true story. This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac. A true story by L. A. Abbott. Chapter 9. Marrying Two Milleners. Back in Vermont. Fresh Temptations. Margaret Bradley. Wine and Women. A mock marriage in Troy. The Fall Certificate. Medicine and millinery. Eliza Guernsey. A spree at Saratoga. Marrying another milliner. Then 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. From Troy I went. First to Newbury, Port Massachusetts, where I had some business and where I remained a week, and then returned to Troy again. Next I went to Bennington, Vermont, 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 led 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 aboard there was temporarily staying a woman, about thirty-two years old. Margaret Bradley, 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 back room 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 Gerard 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, and she and her young woman going to make their purchases, 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 orgy 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 a 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 pennant ink, and sat down and filled out the blank form, putting in my name and Margaret Bradley, 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 won, 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 his 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, rune 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 a 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 a while and see if I could establish a practice. I had disposed of my millinary 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. This satiate monster would not once 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 Guernsey. 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 millinary 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 a 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 parlours. 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 wrote 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 true affair, but a genuine document signed by a minister residing in Saratoga and witnessed by her sister and someone in the hotel who had been called in. But the whole was like he dreamed 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 the marriage was affected. Meanwhile, the Montpellier papers had the whole story, one of them publishing a glowing account of my elopement with Ms. Guernsey and the facts of our marriage at Saratoga was duly chronicled. This paper fell into the hands of Miss Bradley at Ritaland 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 Ritaland. I had not been back from Saratoga half an hour before I was arrested in the public house in Montpellier, and taken before magistrate on complaint of Miss Bradley of Ritaland 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 claims whatsoever 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 and nor was she permitted to visit me during my entire stay there, at least she got into see me about once. I made every effort to get bail but was unsuccessful. Eight long, weary months elapsed before my trial came on and all these 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, accepting the signature of the young woman who also witnessed it, it was entirely in Henry's hand riding. 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 to 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 and hours 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. Being 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 Montpellier to Windsor. End of Chapter 9 Chapter 10 of Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Maniac, a true story. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Maniac, a true story by L.A. Abbott. Chapter 10 Prison Life in Vermont. Entering Prison. The scythe-snath business. Blistered hands. I learn nothing. Threat to kill the shopkeeper. 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 more his life, howling in the black hole, taking off Hall's irons. A ghastly spectacle. A prison funeral. I am let alone. Murder 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 party-colored 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 Montpellier 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 More 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 a shopkeeper 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. I 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 black guardism about this matter, said the deputy. Some 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 shopkeeper said it I dropped at the snath, raised my axe and told him that if he came one step nearer to me I would make minds meat 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 shopkeeper and the guard. They cheered. The deputy warden was soon on the ground. It 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 must, 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 every one of my shopmates thought I was in the dungeon undergoing severe punishment for my rebellious 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 Moray 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 an oil one. This business occupied my entire time and attention for nearly three months. When 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's opposition 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 live long day. Day and night were like 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 presumed 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 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 snails 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 hole 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 called 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 at 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 capola 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 someone 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 Moray came in and said something to him and in a moment the man sprung upon him. He had secured some help, 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. Moray 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. Moray 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 a 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! Bring me 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. More 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 he 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 men 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 More 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, or at least I heard nothing of it. When I pressed the matter upon More'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 left alone. I 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 of seven wives and seven prisons, or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac. A true story. This is LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Seven wives and seven prisons, or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac. A true story. By L. A. Abbott. CHAPTER XI. On the tramp. The day of my deliverance. Out of clothes. Sharing with a beggar. A good friend. Going through the snow. Weary walks. Trusting to luck. Comfort at Concord. At Meridith Bridge. The blaze dells. 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 Chervis. 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 Maury'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 designed to someone else, and my silk hat and calf-skinned boots had gone with a close. 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 broken 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 knew 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 pocketful 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 milleners 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 farmhouse to warm myself. The woman had just baked a shortcake 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 shortcake 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 shortcake. 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 me 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 dead-headed, with my friend the conductor to Meredith Bridge. Everybody knew me there. The hotelkeeper made me welcome to his house and said I could stay as long as I liked. Say, do you 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 drop-sea 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 done-ing, 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 from 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 Newbury Port, 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 Taylor 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 Blaise still pay you for the coat? He told me he would, it's little enough out of what he owes me. He never said a word to me about it was a reply. I told the Taylor 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 peer-pour 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 for the Blaise Deles. 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 a 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 Manik 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 milleners. 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 own business. My business and had let the women alone. When I called and 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 a last. I won't work any how. The warden laughed heartily and sent for Deputy More 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 tall 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 Ajervis where I met my eldest son. Chapter 12 of Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Maniac, a true story. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Maniac, a true story, by L.A. Abbott. Chapter 12. Attempt to Kidnap Sarah Shimer'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, resolved to kidnap the boy. Remonstrouses 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 Belfedere. 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 Shimer 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 eastern 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 two real marriage with 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 anyone 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 fulfill 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 shimmers, 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 stepfather, 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 back into 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 Shimer. Do you know that the man with whom you live is not your father? 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 in 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 Shimer'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 a 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 enriching Belvedere. 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 in each 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 jerseys mentioned 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 Belvedere Bridge. All the country about there was as familiar to me as the country 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 shimmers 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 an account of the shimmers. 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 Belvedere, and insisted upon remaining when I warned him of our danger. These facts shown any magistrate before whom he might be taken might 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 service 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 Belvedere 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 human 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 Belvedere 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 Belvedere 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 the letter to the landlord and he offered to go down with another man to Belvedere and see about the bail. I gave him three hundred dollars which he took with him and put into the hands 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 had died for it. He reproached me for attempting to carry off the boy against his advice and warning. He knew we shouldn't 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 scot-free, would be certain to revive the whole of the old Shimer 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 main 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 of the fair 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 a word for me that he had gone to Belvedere. 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 a word about a 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 $100 directing him to employee counsel 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 have 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 Chervis to go down as I supposed into Pennsylvania, I had no more idea of kidnapping the boy than I had of robbing a sheepfold. It was only when the landlord at Watergap 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 SEVEN WIFES AND SEVEN PRISONS, OR EXPERIENCES IN THE LIFE OF A MATRIMONIAL MANIAC, A TRUE STORY. FOR MORE INFORMATION OR TO VOLUNTEER, PLEASE VISIT LibriVox.org. SEVEN WIFES AND SEVEN PRISONS, OR EXPERIENCES IN THE LIFE OF A MATRIMONIAL MANIAC, A TRUE STORY, BY LA ABBOT CHAPTER XIII. ANOTHER WIDOW. WAITING FOR THE VERDICT. MY SON SENT TO STATE PRISON. WHAT SARA WOULD HAVE DONE? INTERVIEW WITH MY FIRST WIFE. HELP FOR HENRY. THE BIDFORD WIDOW. HER EFFORT TO MARRY ME. OUR VISIT TO BOSTON. A WARNING. A GENERUS GIFT. HENRY PARTENED. CLOSE OF THE SHIMER ACCOUNT. VISIT TO ANTERIO COUNTY. MY RICH CUSINS. 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 Belvedere 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 a 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 Jury men, he had better have let his innocence go by default. We never even got back against 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 Watergap 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 close 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 for me, lost the boy and had sent Henry who was wholly in his sense to state prison for eighteen months. The poor fellow was to 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 bid for it where I had 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 lawyers 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 then I had never seen the woman since that day. This business transacted. I had once returned to my practice at Bidford. Among my patients was a wealthy widow, fat, fair and 40, 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 confessed 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 least learned the lesson that I had better let matrimony alone. I had married too many wives, widows, millionaires 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. Thus 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 to 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 being 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 friends 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 had returned to Bidford and notified her friends there that 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 Bidford, 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. Going to Worcester and going from there to Boston, besides what the widow had 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 had 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 Unadia. With the release of my son, I consider the Shimer account closed, and I have never made any effort to see Sarah or our boy since that time. From Boston I went to Pittsburgh, Ontario, counting New York, 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 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 rumour even respecting me and 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 tolerable 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 so much 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 Shimer'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 eight and twelve there 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 lost 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 black smith. 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 razors of stock, wool growers and everything else that could make them prosperous. There seemed to be no end to their wealth and their flat 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 was 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 today and tomorrow 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 XIII of Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac a true story. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac a true story by L.A. Abbott. 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, living Henry, 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 bare-faced 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. Wherever 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 Bidford 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. Until 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 times seriously, nearly all the time since he went to Unadile. The fact that he was entirely innocent of the offense 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 Unadile 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 attendants 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 spirit, so much so that I meditated taking a long tour with him to the south hoping that the journey there and back again would fully restore him. Fortunately my recent main business had put me in possession of abundant funds and when I had matured my scheme and saw that Henry was intolerable conditioned to travel I proposed the trip to him and he joyfully ascended to my plan. I wanted to get him far away for a while 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 taking 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. New 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, St. Sinati, 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 riverfront was one mass of merchandise which had come to the city or was a waiting 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 furrow and militia, companies and regiments paraded the streets every day while secession meetings were held in various halls or in the public squares nearly every night. From the St. Charles Hotel where we stopped, St. Charles Street seemed ablaze in a live 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 a 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 theaters, 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 Carrollton down to the battleground or on to the Shell Road to Lake Pontchartrain. 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 York leans, 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 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 the 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 not 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 fulfill. 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 it for the wagon, three hundred dollars for one horse and four hundred dollars for the other. A pretty good profit on my time in 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 this 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 someone 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 these young gentlemen 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 Sydney. 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 them 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 hope 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 had 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, doctors 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 someone downstairs 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 an 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 silence 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 complaints against him. He is my son. But the landlord was bound to have some satisfaction out of the fair so he dragged the young men 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 letters to his mother. They knew too from the same letters for I had notified Henry at what time I should 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 a complaining of being homesick he went to visit his mother again. End of chapter 14. Chapter 15 of Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac a true story. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Seven Wives and Seven Prisons or experiences in the life of a matrimonial maniac a true story by L.A. Abbott. Chapter 15. A true wife and home at last. Where were all my wives? Sense of security and 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 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 had 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 Guernsey were still carrying on the millinery business in Rutland and in Montpellier 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 Dr. Blank, I was scarcely liable to be recognized at any time or by anyone 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 and my better behavior 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 Montpellier with whom you spent so many months before you went to Windsor. I knew you in a minute and doctor I have been in Boston a week and have got strapped. How to get back to Montpellier 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 months 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 15 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 and 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 a 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 12 acres which could be bought in Rensselaar County, not more than 16 miles from Albany in Troy. I went to see the place, liked it and bought it for $1600. There was a small but good house and a barn on the place and all together 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 in 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 Dr. Blank receiving my patients at Stanwick's 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 leave 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 he 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 it 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 circumstance 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 today, 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 with 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 Dr. Blank, that I lived in Rensselaer County in a small place of my own. I raised fruit and vegetables for market, I cured cancers, drop seeds 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 a 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 Dr. 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. I told him I was Dr. 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 am 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 receded, the carpet looked first rate, I never saw a handsomer one in my life. Well, you are an odd chap anyhow, said the carpet dealer, laughing and shaking me by the hand. Almost from that moment we were more than mere acquaintances, we were frost friends. In the course of the long conversation that followed I told him of my trouble with the hardware men, 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 men sued me no less than nineteen times and for pretty much everything, damages debt, breach of contract and what not. With 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 courtroom. 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 a 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 men 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 in Fosa Lake 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 a 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 horseshoe 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 a 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 as so much of a 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 for 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 was 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 know, 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 pitted my misfortunes, pardoned my errors, and won bright to 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, gaming the woods and fishing the streams of Ford 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 the 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. End of Chapter 15. End of Seven Wives in Seven Prisons, or Experiences in the Life of a Matrimonial Maniac. A true story.