CHAPTER VII.

Wedding A widow, and the consequences.

I marry A widow-six weeks of happiness-confiding A secret and the
consequences-the widow’s brother-sudden flight from Newark-in
Hartford, Conn.-My wife’s sister betrays me-trial for bigamy-
sentenced to ten years imprisonment-I become A “Bobbin boy"-A good
friend-Governor price visits me in prison-he pardons me-ten years’
sentence fulfilled in seven months.

Why in the world did Captain Brown ever tempt me with the prospect of a profitable patient in Newark?  I had no thought of going to that city, and no business there except to see if I could cure Captain Brown’s daughter.  With my matrimonial monomania it was like putting my hand into the fire to go to a fresh place, where I should see fresh faces, and where fresh temptations would beset me.  And when I went to Newark, I went only as I supposed, to see a single patient; but Captain Brown prevailed upon me to stay to take care of his daughter, and assured me that he and his friends would secure me a good practice.  They did.  In two months I was doing as well in my profession as I had ever done in any place where I had located.  I might have attended strictly to my business, and in a few years have acquired a handsome competence.  But, as ill luck, which, strangely enough, I then considered good luck, would have it, when I had been in Newark some two months, I became acquainted with a buxom, good-looking widow, Mrs. Elizabeth Roberts.  I protest to-day that she courted me-not I her.  She was fair, fascinating, and had a goodly share of property.  I fell into the snare.  She said she was lonely; she sighed; she smiled, and I was lost.

Would that I had observed the elder Weller’s injunction:  “Bevare of vidders;” would that I had never seen the Widow Roberts, or rather that she had never seen me.  Eight weeks after we first met we were married.  We had a great wedding in her own house, and all her friends were present.  I was in good practice with as many patients as I could attend to; she had a good home and we settled down to be very happy.

For six weeks, only six weeks, I think we were so.  We might have been so for six weeks, six months, six years longer; but alas!  I was a fool I confided to her the secret of my first marriage, and separation, and she confided the same secret to her brother, a well-to-do wagon-maker in Newark.  So far as Elizabeth was concerned, she said she didn’t care; so long as the separation was mutual and final, since