I secured some other practice in
the neighborhood, and frequently visited Easton, Belvidere, Harmony,
Oxford, and other near by places, on either side of the river.
The Scheimer family consisted of the "old folks" and four sons and
four daughters, the children grown up, for my patient, sixteen years
old, was the youngest. The youngest daughter, Sarah, eighteen years
old, was an accomplished and beautiful girl. Now it would seem as if
with my sad experience I ought by this time, to have turned my back
on women forever. But I think I was a monomaniac on the subject of
matrimony. My first wife had so misused me that it was always in my
mind that some reparation was due me, and that I was fairly entitled
to a good helpmate. The ill-success of my efforts, hitherto, to
secure one, and my consequent sufferings were all lost upon
me--experience, bitter experience, had taught me nothing.
I had not been in the Scheimer family three months before I fell in
love with the daughter Sarah and she returned my passion. She
promised to marry me, but said there was no use in saying anything
to her parents about it; they would never consent on account of the
disparity in our ages, for I was then forty years old; but she would
marry me nevertheless, if we had to run away together. Meanwhile,
the old folks had seen enough of our intimacy to suspect that it
might lead to something yet closer, and one day Mr. Scheimer invited
me to leave his house and not to return. I asked for one last
interview with Sarah, which was accorded, and we then arranged a
plan by which she should meet me the next afternoon at four o'clock
at the Jersey ferry, a mile below the house, when we proposed to
quietly cross over to Belvidere and get married.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35