I had been idle now for some weeks in New York, and I went back to Maine, to Biddeford, where I lad a good practice.  I picked up a good deal of money, and in two months I returned to New York to make a brief visit, and to see if something could not be done for the release of Henry from prison.  At my solicitation a friend of mine wrote to Trenton to Henry’s mother to come on to New York, and meet me at the Metropolitan Hotel on a specified day, to transact some business.  She came, and we met for the first time in several years.  We met now simply on business, and there was no expression of sentiment or feeling on either side.  We cared nothing for each other.  I commended her for her devotion to Henry, and then told her I believed, if the proper efforts were made, he could be pardoned out of prison.  I told her what lawyer and other persons to see, and how to proceed in the matter.  I gave her the most minute instructions, and then handed her five hundred dollars with which to fee her lawyer, and to pay her and her daughter’s living expenses in Trenton.  She was grateful for the money, and was only too glad to go to work for Henry; she would have done it long ago if she had only known what to do.  We then parted, and I have never seen the woman, since that day.

This business transacted, I at once returned to my practice at Biddeford.  Among my patients was a wealthy widow, “fat, fair, and forty,” and I had not attended her long before a warm affection sprung up between us, and in time, when the widow recovered, we began to think we were in love with each other.  I confess that I agreed to marry her; but it was to be at some distant day-a very distant day as I intended—­for, strange as it may seem, and as it did seem to me, I had at last learned the lesson that I had better let matrimony alone.  I had married too many wives, widows, milliners, and what not, already, and had suffered too severely for so doing.  I meant that my Vermont imprisonment, the worst of all, should be the last.

So I only “courted” the widow, calling upon her almost every day, and I was received and presented to her acquaintances as her affianced husband.  Her family and immediate friends were violently opposed to the match, thereby showing their good sense.  I was also informed that they knew something of my previous history, and I was warned that I had better not undertake to marry the widow.  Bless their innocent hearts!  I had no idea of doing it.  I was daily amazed at my own common sense.  My memory was active now; all my matrimonial mishaps of the past, with all the consequences, were ever present to my mind, and never more present than when was in the company of the fascinating widow.  As for her, the more her relatives opposed the match, the more she was bent upon marrying me.  Her family, she, said, were afraid they were going to lose her property, but she would never give them a cent of it, anyhow, and she would marry when and whom she pleased.