I fell into a fit of musing long enough to hear, in my mind's ear, with startling distinctness, the words of two years before: "This world is all a humbug, and the biggest humbug is the best man. . . . You have a window in your breast and you must close that window before you can succeed in life." Now I grasped their full meaning.
Ten years later I went through the province by rail on my wedding journey. At Dorchester, the next village beyond Moncton, I was shown a place where insolvent debtors were kept "on the limits."
"By stopping there," said my informant, "you can see Dr. Foshay."
I suggested the question whether it was worth while to break our journey for the sake of seeing him. The reply of my informant deterred me.
"It can hardly be worth while to do so. He will be a painful object to see,—a bloated sot, drinking himself to death as fast as he can."
The next I heard of him was that he had succeeded.
I reached St. John on the evening that a great celebration of the commencement of work on the first railway in the province was in progress. When things are undecided, small matters turn the scale. The choice of my day for starting out on my adventurous journey was partly fixed by the desire to reach St. John and see something of the celebration. Darkness came on when I was yet a mile or two from the city; then the first rocket I had ever beheld rose before me in the sky. Two of what seemed like unfortunate incidents at the time were most fortunate. Subsequent and disappointing experience showed that had I succeeded in getting the ride I wished in the stage, the resulting depletion of my purse would have been almost fatal to my reaching my journey's end. Arriving at the city, I naturally found all the hotels filled. At length a kindly landlady said that, although she had no bed to give me, I was quite welcome to lie on a soft carpeted floor, in the midst of people who could not find any other sleeping place. No charge was made for this accommodation. My hope of finding something to do which would enable me to earn a little money in St. John over and above the cost of a bed and a daily loaf of bread was disappointed. The efforts of the next week are so painful to recall that I will not harrow the feelings of the reader by describing them. Suffice it to say that the adventure was wound up by an interview at Calais, a town on the Maine border, a few miles from Eastport, with the captain of a small sailing vessel, hardly more than a boat. He was bound for Salem. I asked him the price of a passage.
"How much money have you?" he replied.
I told him; whether it was one or two dollars I do not recall.
"I will take you for that if you will help us on the voyage."