Connecticut it seems rather took care of him than otherwise. He varied the monotony of a brief public career by making sundry excursions on rail-back, if we may be allowed the expression, under the auspices of an excited populace. He found the climate too hot to be agreeable, particularly as his subjects presented him with a beautiful Ulster overcoat of cold tar and goose feathers, and common politeness compelled him to wear it. Need we say the new Governor begged to be recalled?
In the meantime the charter given by Charles II was not destroyed. It was taken care of by Captain Wadsworth, who hid with it in a hollow oak tree, where he remained until the death of the despotic James, which, fortunately, was only about four years, when King William, a real nice man, ascended the throne, and he sat down and wrote to Captain Wadsworth, begging he would not inconvenience himself further on his (William’s) account. It was then that the Charter Oak gave back the faded document and Captain Wadsworth, both in a somewhat dilapidated condition.
SECRETING THE CHARTER.
While confined in the hollow tree the Captain beguiled the tedium of restricted liberty by inventing the wooden nutmeg, a number of which he whittled out of bits of wood taken from the walls of his prison. He subsisted almost exclusively upon these during the four years of his voluntary incarceration, and immediately after his release got out a patent on his invention, which he afterwards “swapped” off to a professor in Yale College, who, we understand, made a handsome fortune out of it.
Thus it ever is that patriotism and self-abnegation for the public weal meets with ample reward.
CHAPTER VII.
RHODE ISLAND—ROGER WILLIAMS “DEALT” WITH—A DESPERATE DISSENTER.
Rhode Island was first settled by a desperate character named Roger Williams, who was banished by the Puritans from Massachusetts because he entertained certain inflammatory views decidedly antagonistic to the enjoyment of religious freedom, namely: that all denominations of Christianity ought to be protected in the new colony.
