ertake me. This course was necessitated by the fact that
the little money that I had in my pocket was insufficient to pay my
way to Boston, even when traveling in the cheapest way.

I thought it only right that the doctor should be made acquainted
with my proceeding and my reason for taking it, so I indited a short
letter, which I tried to reproduce from memory ten years later with
the following result:--

Dear Doctor,--I write this to let you know of the step I am
about to take. When I came to live with you, it was agreed
that you should make a physician of me. This agreement you
have never shown the slightest intention of fulfilling since
the first month I was with you. You have never taken me
to see a patient, you have never given me any instruction
or advice whatever. Beside this, you must know that your
wife treats me in a manner that is no longer bearable.

I therefore consider the agreement annulled from your failure
to fulfill your part of it, and I am going off to make my
own way in the world. When you read this, I shall be far
away, and it is not likely that we shall ever meet again.

If my memory serves me right, the doctor was absent on a visit to
some distant patient on the night in question, and I did not think it
likely that he would return until at least noon on the following day.
By this time my box would have been safely off in the stage, and
I would be far out of reach. To delay his receiving the letter as
much as possible, I did not leave it about the house, but put it in
the window of a shop across the way, which served the neighbors as
a little branch post-office.

But he must have returned sooner than I expected, for, to my great
regret, I never again saw or heard of the box, which contained,
not only the entire outfit for my journey, but all the books of my
childhood which I had, as well as the little mementoes of my mother.
The postmaster who took charge of the goods was a Mr. Pitman.
When I again passed through Salisbury, as I did ten years later,
he had moved away, no one could tell me exactly where.

I was on the road before daybreak, and walked till late at night,
occasionally stopping to bathe my feet in a brook, or to rest for
a few minutes in the shadow of a tree. The possibility of my being
pursued by the doctor was ever present to my mind, and led me to keep
a sharp lookout for coming vehicles. Toward sunset a horse and buggy
appeared, coming over a hill, an