e, that instead of having
him go with me to Augusta, as I intended, by the advice of a friend I
took him into the country where he could be nursed, be quiet, and be
well taken care of till spring. I left him in good hands, promising
to come and see him as soon as I could, and then went back to my old
business in Augusta.

It required a little time to knot the new end of that business to the
end where I had broken off three months before; but I was soon in full
practice again and was once more making and saving money. I had no
matrimonial affair in hand, no temptation in fact, and none but strictly
professional engagements to fulfil. In Augusta and in several other
towns which I visited, for the whole of the rest of the winter, I was
as busy as I could be. Early in the spring I made up my mind to run away
for a week or two, and arranged my business so that I could go down into
Massachusetts and visit Henry, hoping, if he was better, to bring him
back with me to Maine.

Two of my patients in Paris, Maine, had each given me a good horse in
payment for my attendance upon them and their families, and for what
medicines I had furnished, and I took these horses with me to sell in
Boston. I drove them down, putting a good supply of medicines in my
wagon to sell in towns on the way, and when I arrived in Boston sold out
the establishment, getting one hundred and twenty-five dollars for the
wagon, three hundred dollars for one horse, and four hundred dollars
for the other--a pretty good profit on my time and medicine for the two
patients--and I brought with me besides about eighteen hundred dollars,
the net result, above my living expenses, of about three months'
business in Maine, and what I had done on the way down through
Massachusetts. I am thus minute about this money because it now devolves
upon me to show what sort of a family of children my first and worst
wife had brought up.

Of these children by my first marriage, my eldest son Henry, since he
had grown up, had been with me nearly as much as he had been with his
mother, and I loved him as I did my life. Since he became of age, at
such times when I was not in prison, or otherwise unavoidably separated
from him, we had been associated in business, and had traveled and lived
together. I knew all about him; but of the rest of the children I knew
next to nothing. Shortly after I sold my horses, one day I was in my
room at the hotel, when word was brought to me that some