shore that night until the rising tide drove us out, when we decided to take the road back to Schenectady on foot, through a wide pine forest which occupied the intervening country, a distance of about sixteen miles.  Passing on the way a stable in which there was nobody, not even a beast, we turned in to sleep away the darkness, and I remember very well what a yielding bed a manger filled with salt gave me.  With the dawn we resumed the journey, and by the way ate our fill of whortleberries, with which the forest abounded.

[Footnote 1:  121/2 cents each.]

The joy of my mother at our unhoped-for arrival—­for she had received no news of us since our departure—­is easily imagined, but for me the failure of all my plans for an ascetic and more spiritual life was made more bitter by the fact that the little octoroon, who had heard read the letter which I left for my mother, giving the motives for my self-exile, had repeated it to all the neighborhood, so that I not only had failed, but became the butt of the jokes of the boys of the neighborhood, who already held a pique against me for my serious ways and my habit of rebuking certain vices amongst them.  I was jeered at as the boy “who left his mother to seek religion,” and this made life for a time almost intolerable.  But it was in part compensated for by the change in the situation in the household.  It was clear that I had ceased to be the boy I used to be, and that I was to be taken seriously, and reasoned with rather than flogged.  I had escaped from the pupa state of existence.  But what I still look back to with surprise was my unflinching confidence in the future to which I committed myself in this escapade.  I thought I was right, and that the aspiration for spiritual freedom, which was the chief motive of my leaving home, was certain to be supported by Providence, to whom I looked with serene complacence.  If my companion had not deserted me I should not have turned back, but his defection destroyed all my plans.  In several of my maturer ventures, I can recognize the same mental condition of serene indifference to danger while doing what I thought my duty, owing, perhaps, in a great measure to ignorance or incapacity to realize the danger, but also largely to ingrained confidence in an overruling Providence which took account of my steps and would carry me through.

CHAPTER III

AN AMERICAN EDUCATION

Whether on account of the escapade related in the preceding chapter or from influences of which I knew, and still know, nothing, it was decided not long after that I should go to New York to attend a public school there and live with my eldest brother, who, being twenty-five years older than myself, and childless, had always treated me with an indulgence which was perhaps due in part to the rigor of my father’s rule, and in part to his fondness for me, of which I retain some early recollections in his annual visits home.