His friends thought
well of the suggestion, and we traveled in this way about four
months, stopping a few days here and there, when I practiced where I
could, and sold medicines, making some money. At the end of this
time I went back to Montgomery with my patient, as I think, fully
restored, and his father, besides, paying the actual expenses of our
journey, gave me six hundred dollars.
Returning to Sidney I learned that my first and worst wife was then
living with the children at Unadilla, a few miles across the river
in Otsego County. I had no desire to see her, but I heard at the
same time that my youngest boy, a lad ten years old, had been sent
to work on a farm three miles beyond, and that he was not well taken
care of. I drove over to see about it, and after some inquiry I was
told that the boy was then in school. Going to the schoolhouse and
asking for him, the school-mistress, who knew me, denied that he was
there, but I pushed in, and found him, and a ragged, miserable
looking little wretch he was. I brought him out, put him into the
carriage and took him with me on the journey which I was then
contemplating to Amsterdam, N. Y., stopping at the first town to get
him decently clothed. The boy went with me willingly, indeed he was
glad to go, and in due time we arrived at Amsterdam, and from there
we went to Troy.
I had not been in Troy two hours before I was arrested for stealing
my own horse and buggy! My turnout was taken from me, and I found
myself in durance vile.
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