Rabindranath Tagore - "The Fugitive"

Unkown - "The Treaty of the European Union"

Talbot Mundy - "Told in the East"

Unkown - "Vida de Lazarillo"

Seven Wives and Seven Prisons

L >> L.A. Abbott >> Seven Wives and Seven Prisons




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 prisons, and whose exploits had been detailed from time to
time in the papers.

Nor, all this while, did I have the slightest fear of detection. I
looked upon myself as a victim rather than as a criminal, and for
what I had done, and much that I had not done, I had more than paid
the penalty. So far as all my business transactions were concerned,
my course had always been honorable, and in my profession, for my
cures and for my medicines, I enjoyed a good reputation which all my
efforts were directed to deserve.

Of course, now and then, I met people in Portland, and especially in
Boston, who had known me in former years, and who knew something of
my past life; but these were generally my friends who sympathized
with my sufferings, or who, at least, were willing to blot out the
past in my better behavior of the present. One day in Boston a young
man came up to me and said:

"How do you do, Doctor?"

"Quite well," I replied; "but you have the advantage of me; I am
sure I do not remember you, if I ever knew you."

"You don't remember me! Why, I am the son of the jailer in Montpelier
with whom you spent so many months before you went to Windsor; I
knew you in a minute, and Doctor, I've been in Boston a week and
have got 'strapped;' how to get back to Montpelier I don't know,
unless you will lend me five or six dollars which I will send back
to you the moment I get home."

"I remember you well, now," said I; "you are the little rascal who
wouldn't even go and buy me a cigar unless I gave you a dime for
doing it; and then, sometimes, you cheated me out of my money; I
wouldn't lend you a dollar now if it would save you from six month's
imprisonment in your father's filthy jail. Good morning."

And that was the last I saw of him.

I was getting tired of Maine. I had been there longer than I had
stayed in any place, except in the Vermont State Prison, for the
past fifteen years, and I began to long for fresh scenes and a fresh
field for practice. I had accumulated some means, and thought I
might take life a little easier-make a home for myself somewhere,
practicing my profession when I wanted to, and at other times
enjoying the leisure I loved and really needed. So I closed up my
business in Augusta and Portland, put my money in my pocket, and
once more went out into the world on a prospecting tour. My first
idea was to go to the far West, and I went to Troy with the
intention of staying there a few days, and then bidding 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 justice for something or
other, followed me even here. A certain hardware dealer in Albany,
with whom I had become acquainted, proposed to buy one of my
recipes, and to go into an extensive manufacture of the medicine. He
had read and heard of the fortunes that had been made in patent
medicines, by those who understand the business, and he thought he
would see if he could not get rich in a year or less in the same
way.

After some solicitation I sold him the recipe for one thousand
dollars, receiving six hundred dollars down, and a promise of the
balance when the first returns from sales of the medicine came in. I
also entered into a contract to show the man how to make the
medicine, and to give him such advice and assistance in his new
business as I could. My hardware friend understood his legitimate
business better than he did that which he had undertaken, and
although be learned how to manufacture the medicine he did not know
how to sell it; and after trying it a few weeks, and doing next to
nothing, he turned upon me as the author of his misfortunes and sued
me for damages.

Incidental to this, and only incidental, is the following: Shortly
after I purchased my property, as I was very fond of calling my
little farm, in Rensselaer County, I was in Albany one day when it
occurred to me that I wanted a carpet for my parlor. I went to the
store of a well-known carpet-dealer, and asked to be shown some of
his goods. While I was going through the establishment I came across
a man who was industriously sewing together the lengths of a cut
carpet, and I recognized in him one of my fellow convicts at
Windsor. He, however, did not know me, and I doubt if he could have
been convinced of my identity as the wretch who plied the broom in
the halls of the prison. To him, as he glanced at me, I was only a
well-dressed gentleman whom the proprietor was courteously showing
through the establishment in the hope of securing a good customer.
It was this little circumstance, I think-my chance meeting with my
old fellow-prisoner, and my changed circumstances and appearance
which put me beyond recognition by him-that prompted me to the
somewhat brazen business that followed:

"I only came in to look to-day," I said to the carpet-dealer; "for
the precise sum of money in my pocket at present is eighteen pence,
and no more; but if you will cut me off forty yards of that piece of
carpeting, and trust me for it, I will pay your bill in a few days,
as sure as I live."

My frank statement with regard to my finances seemed to attract the
attention of the merchant who laughed and said:

"Well, who are you, anyhow? Where do you live?"

I told him that I was Doctor Blank; that I lived in Rensselaer
county on a small place of my own; I raised fruit and vegetables for
market; I cured cancers, dropsy, and other diseases when I could;
sold medicines readily almost where I would; and was in Albany once
or twice a week.

"Measure and cut off the carpet," said he to the clerk who was
following us, "and put it in the Doctor's wagon"

The bill was about a hundred dollars, and I drove home with the
carpet. It was nearly six weeks afterwards when I went into the
store again, and greeted the proprietor. He had seen me but once
before and had totally forgotten me. I told him I was Doctor Blank,
small farmer and large medical practitioner of Rensselaer County.

"The devil you are! Why, you're the man that bought a carpet of me a
few weeks ago; I was wondering what had become of you."

"I'm the man, and I must tell you that the carpet doesn't look well;
but never mind-here's a hundred dollars, and I want you to receipt
the bill."

"Now," said I, when he returned the bill to me receipted, "the
carpet looks firstrate; I never saw a handsomer one in my life."

"Well, you are an odd chap, any how," said the carpet-dealer,
laughing, and shaking me by the hand. Almost from that moment we
were more than mere acquaintances, we were fast friends. In the
course of the long conversation that followed, I told him of my
trouble with the hardware man-how I had sold him the recipe; that he
had failed, from ignorance to conduct the business properly, and had
sued me for damages.

"I know the man," said my new friend; "let him go ahead and sue and
be-benefited, if he can; meanwhile, do you keep easy; I'll stand by
you."

And stand by me he did through thick and thin. The hardware man sued
me no less than nineteen times, and for pretty much
everything-damages, debt, breach of contract, and what not. With the
assistance of a lawyer whom my friend recommended to me, I beat my
opponent in eighteen successive suits; but as fast as one suit was
decided he brought another, almost before I could get out of the
court room. At last he carried the case to the Supreme Court, and
from there it went to a referee. The matter from beginning to end,
must have cost him a mint of money; but he went on regardless of the
costs which he hoped and expected to get out of me at last.

My long and painful experience, covering many years, had given me a
pretty thorough knowledge of the law's uncertainty, as well as the
law's delay, and very early in the course of the present suit, I had
quietly disposed of my property in Rensselaer County. I sold the
little farm, which cost me sixteen hundred dollars, for twenty-one
hundred dollars, and I had had, besides, the profits of nearly two
years' farming and a good living from and on the place. I also
arranged all my money matters in a manner that I felt assured would
be satisfactory to me, if not to my opponent, and then, following
the advice of my friend, the carpet-dealer, I let the hardware man
sue and be-"benefited if he could." When, however, the case went
finally to a referee who was certain, I felt sure, to decide against
me, I took no further personal interest in the matter, nor have I
ever troubled myself to learn the filial decision. I made up my mind
in a moment and decided that the time had come, at last, when it was
advisable for me to go to the West.

Westward I went, towards sunset almost, and for the two following
years I led, I fear, what would be considered a very vagabond life.
I went to Utah, thinking while I was in Salt Lake City, if they only
knew my history there I was sure to be elected an apostle, or should
be, at any rate, a shining light in Mormondom-only I had taken my
wives in regular succession, and had not assembled the throng
together. I pushed across the plains, and went to California,
remaining a long time in San Francisco. This may have been
vagabondism, but it was profitable vagabondism to me. During this
long wandering I held no communication with my friends in the East;
friends and foes alike had an opportunity to forget me, or if they
thought of me they did not know whether I was dead or alive; they
certainly never knew, all the time, where I was; and while I was
journeying I never once met a man or woman who had been acquainted
with me in the past. All the time, too, I had plenty of money;
indeed, when, I returned at last I was richer far than I was when I
left Albany, and left as the common saying graphically expresses it,
"between two days." I had my old resources of recipes, medicines and
my profession, and these I used, and had plenty of opportunity to
use, to the best advantage. I could have settled in San Francisco
for life with the certainty of securing a handsome annual income. I
never feared coming to want. If I had lost my money and all other
resources had failed, I was not afraid to make a horse-nail or turn
a horse-shoe with the best blacksmith in California, and I could
have got my living, as I did for many a year, at the forge and
anvil.

But I made more money in other and easier ways, and I made friends.
In every conceivable way my two years' wandering was of far more
benefit to me than I dreamed of when I wildly set out for the West
without knowing exactly where, or for what, I was going. The new
country, too, had given me, not only a fresh fund of ideas, but a
new stock of health--morally and physically I was in better
condition than I ever was before in my life. I had a clear head; a
keen sense of my past follies; a vivid consciousness of the
consequences which such follies, crimes they may be called, are
almost certain to bring. I flattered myself that I was not only a
reformed prisoner, but a reformed drunkard, and a thoroughly
restored matrimonial monomaniac.

And when I returned, at last, to the East, and went once more to
visit my near and dear friends in Ontario County, I was received as
one who had come back from the dead. When I had been here a few
weeks, and had communicated to my cousins so much of the story of my
life as I then thought advisable, I took good counsel and finally
did what I ought to have done long years before. I commenced proper
legal proceedings for a divorce from my first and worst wife. I do
not need to dwell upon the particulars; it is enough to say, that
the woman, who was then living, so far from opposing me, aided me
all she could, even making affidavit to her adultery with the hotel
clerk at Bainbridge, long ago, and I easily secured my full and
complete divorce. Now I was, indeed, a free man-all the other wives
whom I had married, or who had married me, whether I would or no,
were as nothing; some were dead and others were again married. It
may be that this new, and to me strange sense of freedom, legitimate
freedom, set me to thinking that I might now secure a genuine and
true wife, who would make a new home happy to me as long as we both
should live.

Fortune, not fate now, followed me, led me rather and guided my
footsteps. It was not many months before I met a woman who seemed to
me in every way calculated to fill the first place in that home
which I had pictured as a final rest after all my woes and
wanderings. From mutual esteem our acquaintance soon ripened into
mutual love. She was all that my heart could desire. I was tolerably
well off; my position was reputable; my connections were
respectable. To us, and to our friends, the match seemed a most
desirable one. It was no hasty courtship; we knew each other for
months and learned to know each other well; and with true love for
each other, we had for each other a genuine respect. I frankly told
her the whole story of my life as I have now written it. She only
pitied my misfortunes, pardoned my errors, and, one bright, golden,
happy autumn day, we were married.

In the northeastern part of the State of New York on the banks of a
broad and beautiful river, spread out far and near the fertile acres
of one of the finest farms in the country. It is well stocked and
well tilled. The surrounding country is charming--game in the woods,
and fish in the streams afford abundant sport, and the region is far
away from large cities, and remote even from railroads. I do not
know of a more delightful place in the whole world to live in. On
the farm I speak of, a cottage roof covers a peaceful, happy family,
where content and comfort always seem to reign supreme. A noble
woman, a most worthy wife is mistress of that house; joyous children
move and play among the trees that shade the lawns; and the head
of the household, the father of the family, is the happiest of thee
group.

That farm, that family, that cottage, that wife, that happy home are
mine-all mine. I have found a true wife and a real home at last.

My story is told; and if it should suggest to the reader the moral
which is too obvious to need rehearsal, one object I had in telling
the story will have been accomplished.

THE END.

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