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. Whenever 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 Biddeford 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.
While 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 time seriously, nearly all the time since he went to
Unadilla. The fact that he was entirely innocent of the offence 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.
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