I honestly meant to make every effort to
be so, and on my stay to New York I made numberless vows for my own
future good behavior. I bound myself over, as it were, to keep the
pace-my own peace and quiet especially-and became my own surety.
That I could not have had a poorer bondsman, subsequent events
proved to my sorrow. But I started fairly, and meant to let liquor
alone; to attend strictly to my medical business, which I always
managed to make profitable, and above all, to have nothing to do
with women in the love-making or matrimonial way.
With those good resolutions I arrived in New York and went to my old
hotel in Courtland Street, where I was well known and was well
received. My trunk, which I had left there sixteen months before,
was safe, and I had a good suit of clothes on my back--the clothes I
took off when I went to prison in Trenton--and which were returned
to me when I came away. I went to a friend who loaned me some money,
and I remained two or three days in town to try my new-found
freedom, going about the city, visiting places of amusement,
enjoying myself very much, and keeping, so far, the good resolutions
I had formed.
From New York I went to Troy, and at the hotel where I stopped I
became acquainted with a woman who told me that her husband was in
the Insane Asylum at Brattleboro, Vt. She was going to see him, and
if he was fit to be removed, she proposed to take him home, with
her. I told her of the success I had had in taking care of two men
at Newbury and Montgomery; and how I had traveled about the country
with them, and with the most beneficial results to my patients.
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