LAW--SUITS--SUDDEN DEPARTURE FOR THE WEST--A VAGABOND FOR TWO
YEARS--LIFE IN CALIFORNIA--RETURN TO THE EAST--DIVORCE FROM MY FIRST
WIFE--A GENUINE MARRIAGE--MY FARM--HOME AT LAST.

I remained in Maine nearly two years, hardly ever going out of the
State, except occasionally to Boston on business. Making Augusta my
residence and headquarters, I practiced in Portland and in nearly all
the towns and cities in the eastern part of the State. During all this
time, I behaved myself, in all respects better than I had ever before
done in any period of my life. I began to look upon myself as a reformed
man; I had learned to let liquor alone, and was consequently in far
less, indeed, next to no danger of stepping into the traps in which
my feet had been so often caught. I may as well confess it--it was
intoxicating liquor, and that mainly, which had led me into my various
mad marrying schemes and made me the matrimonial monomaniac and lunatic
lover that I was for years. What my folly, my insanity caused me to
suffer, these pages have attempted to portray. I had grown older, wiser,
and certainly better. I now only devoted myself strictly to my business,
and I found profit as well as pleasure in doing it.

What had become of all my wives in the meantime, I scarcely knew and
hardly cared. Of course from time to time I had heard more or less about
them--at least, a rumor of some sort now and then reached me. About my
first and worst wife, at intervals I heard something from Henry, who was
still with her, and who frequently wrote to me when he was well enough
to do so. Margaret Bradley and Eliza Gurnsey were still carrying on
the millinery business in Rutland, and in Montpelier, and were no
doubt weaving other and new webs in hopes of catching fresh flies. Mary
Gordon, as I learned soon afterwards, was married almost before I had
fairly escaped from New Hampshire in my flight to Canada, and she had
gone to California with her new husband. Of the Newark widow I knew
nothing; but two years of peace, quiet, and freedom from molestation
in Maine had made me feel quite secure against any present or future
trouble from my past matrimonial misadventures.

I was living in Maine, prudently I think under an assumed name, and as
the respectable, and, to my patients and customers, well-known Doctor
Blank, I was scarcely liable to be recognized at any time or by any
one as the man who had married so many wives, been in so many jails and
pri