I was released, and my lawyers advised me to leave,
which I did at once, and went to Pittsfield, and from there to
Worthington, Mass., where I had another half-sister, who was married
to Mr. Josiah Bartlett, and was well off.
Here I settled down, for all that I knew to the contrary, for life.
For some years past, I had devoted my leisure hours from the forge
to the honest endeavor to make up for the deficiencies in my
youthful education, and had acquired, among other things, a good
knowledge of medicine. I did not however, believe in any of the
"schools" particularly those schools that make use of mineral
medicines in their practice. I favored purely vegetable remedies,
and had been very successful in administering them. So I began life
anew, in Worthington, as a Doctor, and aided by my half-sister and
her friends, I soon secured a remunerative practice.
I was beginning to be truly happy. I supposed that the final
separation, mutually agreed upon between my wife and myself, was as
effectual as all the courts in the country could make it, and I
looked upon myself as a free man. Accordingly, after I had been in
Worthington some months I began to pay attentions to the daughter of
a flourishing farmer. She was a fine girl; she received my addresses
favorably, and we were finally privately married. This was the
beginning of my life-long troubles. In a few weeks her father found
out that I had been previously married, and was not, so far as he
knew, either a divorced man or a widower.
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