“Well, I stayed in New York till my time was out, and then went to Hartford and worked three years, and enjoyed myself pretty well, only I couldn’t help thinkin’ ’bout Solena. She was mixed up with all my dreams and thoughts, and I used to spend hours and hours in thinkin’ about what I’d lost. But arter all I suffered, I’m kind’a inclined to think ’twas all kind in God to take her away, for arter this, I never was so wicked agin nigh. I hadn’t time or disposition to hunt up my old comrades, and if any time I begun to plunge into sin, then the thought of Solena’s memory would come up afore me and check me in a minute, but I was yit a good ways from rale religion.
“While I was there, in December, 1814, the famous Hartford Convention sot with closed doors, and nobody could find out what they was about, and every body was a talkin’ about it, and they han’t got over talkin’ about it, and I don’t b’lieve they ever will. The same winter the war closed and peace was declared. I could tell a good many stories about the war, but I guess ‘twould make the book rather too long, and every body enemost knows all about the last war.
“Well, I went down to Middletown and stayed a year there, and then I went to hire out to a man in West Springfield, and he was a farmer, and he hadn’t a chick nor child in the world, and he had a share in a fishin’ place on the Connecticut, and he was as clever as the day is long. He let me fish nights and have all I got, and sometimes I’ve made a whole lot of money at one haul, and in that season I made thirty-five dollars jist by fishin’ nights, besides good wages—and I didn’t make a dollar fishin’ for Gideon Morehouse nights for years!
“While I was there a Baptist minister come on from Boston and preached some time, and they had a great revival, and I see twenty immersed down in the Connecticut, and ’twas one of the most solemn scenes that ever I witnessed.
“They went down two by two to the river, and he made a prayer and then sung this hymn, and I shan’t ever forget it, for a good many on ’em was young.
“‘Now in the heat of youthful blood,
Remember your Creator God;
Behold the months come hastening on
When you shall say ‘my joys are gone.’”
“And then he went in and baptized ’em; and I know I felt as though I wished I was a christian, for it seemed to me there was somethin’ very delightful in it, and then they sung and prayed agin, and then went home.