a good
helpmate. The ill-success of my efforts, hitherto, to secure one,
and my consequent sufferings were all lost upon me--experience, bitter
experience, had taught me nothing.

I had not been in the Scheimer family three months before I fell in love
with the daughter Sarah and she returned my passion. She promised to
marry me, but said there was no use in saying anything to her parents
about it; they would never consent on account of the disparity in
our ages, for I was then forty years old; but she would marry me
nevertheless, if we had to run away together. Meanwhile, the old
folks had seen enough of our intimacy to suspect that it might lead to
something yet closer, and one day Mr. Scheimer invited me to leave his
house and not to return. I asked for one last interview with Sarah,
which was accorded, and we then arranged a plan by which she should meet
me the next afternoon at four o'clock at the Jersey ferry, a mile below
the house, when we proposed to quietly cross over to Belvidere and get
married. I then took leave of her and the family and went away.

The next day, at the appointed time, I was at the ferry--Sarah, as I
learned afterwards, left the house at a much earlier hour to "take a
walk" and while she was, foolishly I think, making a circuitous route
to reach the ferry, her father, who suspected that she intended to run
away, went to the ferryman and told him his suspicions, directing him
if Sarah came there by no means to permit her to cross the river.
Consequently when Sarah met me at the ferry, the ferryman flatly refused
to let either of us go over. He knew all about it, he said, and it was
"no go." I had two hundred dollars in my pocket and I offered him any
reasonable sum, if he would only let us cross; but no, he knew the
Scheimers better than he knew me, and their goodwill was worth more
than mine. Here was a block to the game, indeed. I had sent my baggage
forward in the morning to Belvidere; Sarah had nothing but the clothes
she wore, for she was so carefully watched that she could carry or send
nothing away; but she was ready to go if the obstinate ferryman had not
prevented us.

While we were pressing the ferryman to favor us, down came one of
Sarah's brothers with a dozen neighbors, and told her she must return
home or he would carry her back by force. I interfered and said she
should not go. Whereupon one fellow took hold of me and I promptly
knocked him down, and notified the crowd tha