experience, even the
bitterest, was utterly thrown away upon me; I seemed to get out of one
scrape only to walk, with my eyes open, straight into another.

At the hotel where I went to board, there was temporarily staying a
woman, about thirty-two years old, Margaret Bradly, by name, who kept a
large millinery establishment in town. I became acquainted with her, and
she told me that she owned a house in the place, in which she and her
mother lived; but her mother had gone away on a visit, and as she did
not like to live alone she had come to the hotel to stay for a few days
till her mother returned. Margaret was a fascinating woman; she knew it,
and it was my miserable fate to become intimate, altogether too intimate
with this designing milliner.

I went to her store every day, sometimes two or three times a day, and
she always had in her backroom, wine or something stronger to treat me
with, and in the evening I saw her at the hotel. When her mother came
back, and Margaret opened her house again, I was a constant visitor. I
was once more caught; I was in love.

Matters went on in this way for several weeks, when one evening I told
her that I was going next day to Troy on business, and she said she
wanted to go there to buy some goods, and that she would gladly take the
opportunity to go with me, if I would let her. Of course, I was only too
happy; and the next day I and my son, and she and one of the young women
in her employ, who was to assist her in selecting goods, started for
Troy. When I called for her, just as we were leaving the house, the old
lady, her mother, called out:

"Margaret, don't you get married before you come back."

"I guess I will," was Margaret's answer, and we went, a very jovial
party of four, to Troy and put up at the Girard House, where we had
dinner together, and drank a good deal of wine. After dinner my son and
myself went to attend to our business, she and her young woman going to
make their purchases, and arranging to meet us at a restaurant at half
past four o'clock, when we would lunch preparatory to returning to
Rutland.

We met at the appointed place and hour, and had a very lively lunch
indeed, an orgie in fact, with not only enough to eat, but altogether
too much to drink. I honestly think the two women could have laid me and
my son under the table, and would have done it, if we had not looked out
for ourselves; as it was, we all drank a great deal and were very merry.
We we