ing farewell to the East forever. The New England States
presented no attractions to me; I had exhausted Maine, or rather it had
exhausted me; New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts had too many
unpleasant associations, if indeed they were safe states for me, with my
record to live in, and Connecticut I knew very little about. Certainly I
had no intention of trying to settle in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The
west was the place; anywhere in the west.

Here was I in Troy, revolving plans in my own mind for migrating to the
west, just as Mary Gordon and I had done in the very same hotel, only a
few years before; and in the course of a week I came to exactly the same
conclusion that Mary and I did--not to go. I heard of a small farm--it
was a very small one of only twelve acres--which could be bought in
Rensselaer County, not more than sixteen miles from Albany and Troy.
I went to see the place, liked it, and bought it for sixteen hundred
dollars. There was a small but good house and a barn on the place,
and altogether it was a cheap and desirable property. I got a good
housekeeper, hired a man, and began to carry on this little farm,
raising garden vegetables and fruit mainly, and sending them to market
in Albany and Troy. Generally I took my own stuff to market, and sold
medicines and recipes as well, and in Albany I had a first rate practice
which I went to that city to attend to once or twice a week. While
my man was selling vegetables and fruit--I remember I sold a hundred
dollars worth of cherries from my farm the first summer--in the market,
I was Doctor Blank receiving my patients at Stanwix Hall, or calling
upon them at their residences; and when the day's work was over, my man
and I rode home in the wagon which had brought us and the garden truck
early in the morning. On the whole, this kind of life was exceedingly
satisfactory, and I liked it.

I made frequent expeditions to Saratoga and to other places not far from
home to attend to cases to which I was called, and to sell medicines;
and considering that the main object I had in settling in Rensselaer
County was rest and more leisure than I had enjoyed for some years, I
had a great deal more to do than I desired. Nevertheless, I might
have continued to live on my little farm, raising vegetables, picking
cherries, and practicing medicine in the neighborhood, had not the fate,
which seemed to insist that I should every little while come before
a court of just