At
last, he left his practice, and all his connections, and wandered over
the United States--through towns and wildernesses. He rode across the
plains on a mustang; clambered through the gorges of the Rocky
Mountains; saw the tide come in through the Golden Gate at San
Francisco. He pushed north as far as Canada, and thence came down the
Mississippi to New Orleans. From there he crossed to the Pacific coast
again, and lived to find himself a second time in San Francisco. He
didn't stay there long, but struck overland, slanting southward, and, in
four or five months, appeared at Charleston, South Carolina. So he
worked up the Atlantic coast to New York. By the time he got there, he
was older and wiser, and strengthened, body and mind, by a rough
experience. He resolved to travel no more; but, as yet, it was not in
his power to feel happy.
"Much had happened in his absence. His friend, after living three or
four years with his wife in Europe, was separated from her--not,
however, by a regular divorce--and she had disappeared, and had not
since been heard of. It was reported that she was dead. She had left
with her husband a son, two or three years old, at that time a sickly
little fellow, scarcely expected to live. It was supposed that the
mother had discovered that it was her money, and not herself, that her
husband cared for, and, perhaps, too, may have imagined him to be still
thinking of his first love, who, indeed, was said to have in some way
fomented the quarrel between them, though how, or to what end, was never
known.
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