easily. At about the same time, Burroughs returning one day to Orford to prosecute his courtship, saw a stranger standing in the door of the lady's house, who he was informed was her husband, lately returned home. At thus finding the trick turned upon himself, Burroughs exclaims, "The blood curdled in my veins God of Nature! what greater scenes of distress are reserved in store May I hide my self with a mantle of darkness, and retire from the stage of action, into eternal obscurity."

To contribute to this obscurity, Burroughs borrowed the name of Davis, and taking a horse from home, proceeded down the Connecticut River about one hundred and fifty miles to Ludlow, Mass.; where he arrived on a Saturday, having heard that the church there needed a clergyman; having provided himself for such a contingency by taking ten written sermons of his father's on leaving home. He put up at the house of Mr. Fuller, the leading man of the ecclesiastical society, introducing himself as a clergyman; and received an invitation to spend the Sabbath with them and to preach. With all his boldness, he, on thinking over the matter felt some misgivings as to so formidable an undertaking; but the hard necessity of getting a livelihood determined him to attempt this hitherto untried employment. On reaching the pulpit he found his voice at command, and went through the exercises of the forenoon, as well as those of the afternoon, without difficulty; and though he was not hired longer, his service brought him an introduction, through Mr. Fuller, to the minister at Palmer who had charge of ministerial supply in that region; who examined him as to education, tenets, and knowledge of divinity; and satisfied as to his orthodoxy, recommended him to the church in Pelham, with an introductory letter to its deacon; on this recommendation he was hired for four Sabbaths, at five dollars each, then re-engaged for sixteen more. However, being suddenly called to preach a funeral sermon at a private house, a sharp hearer, who had begun to wonder how a youth of nineteen could preach sermons so mature, had an opportunity to see the manuscript, which showed signs of age; and suspicion being aroused, the people proposed that he prove his ability the next Sunday by preaching from the text "old shoes and clouted upon their feet." Joshua 9:5. Having observed for so long the sermonizing of his father, who had special power as an extemporaneous preacher, he was able to satisfy his hearers' idea of sermonizing.

At Pelham he obtained the seed-thought which led to his future occupation, by falling in with one Phillips, a pupil of Glazier Wheeler, famed for his supposed power of transmuting copper into good silver. But when he was well nigh at the end of his engagement, one Sunday only remaining, his posing under a false name was unwittingly exposed by a former acquaintance, who on arriving where he was, accosted him by the name Burroughs by which he had always known him. Afraid to face the reputation attached to that name, he took his horse and fled by night to Rutland, Mass., notwithstanding he had been paid in advance for one more Sunday. The people of Pelham were not only angry with themselves for being imposed upon, but also, being poor, doubly angered at Burroughs, on the ground both of imposition and cheating; and several of the men took horse and pursued after Burroughs, finding him in a shop; he, struck with fear, sprang to the back door, and with a blow of his cane broke the arm of a man who prevented his flight, threatening to kill on the spot the first who approached him; one Hind, who dared it, he struck senseless with a stone; and the end was, as might he expected, that he had to flee far beyond the reach of the Pelham people; yet after some weeks ventured there by night to see his closest acquaintance, who like himself was much tempted to embark in Phillips' schemes the real object being the coinage of base or counterfeit money; and when Burroughs left his friend's house, he had engaged to pass twenty dollars said to be of Wheeler's coinage, at Springfield, in purchasing articles at a designated apothecary's shop for his friend, who had not ventured to pass any of this coinage himself. The apothecary detected the counterfeit before Burroughs had time to get out of reach, and he found himself under arrest; and as at that time there was much trouble with counterfeits, the governor of Massachusetts had offered a reward of £25 to any person who should detect another in making or passing counterfeit money, knowing it to be such; a strong incentive for the apothecary to make out his case; Wheeler himself, an aged man who had the art of mixing metal to pass the test of silver, as almost his only art, was also held to trial for this mixing, for it does not appear that he attempted to pass base coins; and a man named Jones, implicated in making or passing counterfeits, was also on trial at this court. Burroughs, not knowing that he had a right to counsel even though he had no money, it took the jury but an hour to bring in a verdict of guilty against him; and he was sentenced to stand one hour in the pillory, and to remain three years confined in the house of correc

tion; Wheeler had added to this, the infliction of twenty stripes, and to be cropped. Jones was sentenced to two years in the house of correc tion, with twenty stripes; and the prisoners were carried to the jail in Northampton, as more secure than that at Springfield where the trial was held. Burroughs soon had as a roommate a Lieutenant Rood; they soon made friends with a third prisoner, held for passing counterfeit bank bills; with this last Burroughs formed a plan of escape; but being caught in the attempt, they received ten lashes each, on the bare back, followed by two days in a dungeon; after which Burroughs was fastened by a chain ten feet long, to the floor of his room; desperate, he succeeded in setting the floor on fire; for which the sheriff whipped him for five minutes, then gave his accomplice twenty lashes, and put both men into the dungeon; Burroughs' feet and waist were fastened by irons to the floor, and he was handcuffed, being kept in this condition for thirty-two days; yet for the first fortnight he says he suffered most from hunger. At the end of thirty-two days, he was visited by his mother's eldest brother, who gave him two dollars; and next by the jailor's wife, who furnished him and his companion with a supply of food in addition to their scanty rations; then the men who had fastened Burroughs down freed him, and removed him to an upper room. After several more attempts to break jail, in which Phillips, who had been imprisoned, showed his remarkable knowledge of mechanical principles, but which attempts were always discovered before the prisoners had escaped, all in the prison were removed to Castle Island in Boston harbor, to put them to labor, under a guard of fifty soldiers, Burroughs being placed in a lower room of the brick prison, with seven others, who went out to work in the blacksmith's shop, while he was left alone, and soon searched the walls of his room for a place to dig out. Deciding upon a place above the fireplace in the back of the chimney, he dug in the bricks for some days with a large nail, when he obtained from one of the prisoners working in the blacksmith shop, a sharpened crowbar about a foot long; the broken brick being carried out by another prisoner in the bottom of the slop-tub which it was his duty to empty every morning. In two months, Burroughs had pierced the wall, the hole opening under a covered walk leading out into the open, and guarded only by a sentry, on account of the fact that the prison rooms were in what was called the bomb-proof, underground. Through this hole the eight prisoners escaped one stormy night when the sentry had retired to shelter. Avoiding the east shore of the island, which was the only part

well fortified, they proceeded to the western shore, where they suddenly seized and silenced the sentry who guarded the boats; and taking a tenoared boat took him with them across the channel to Dorchester, where they released him on his promise not to betray them, and separated into two companies. Burroughs with four others, proceeding about a mile found a barn, where all hid in the haymow; but were discovered the next day by children hunting hens' nests,-through the snoring of the stupidest of their number; and by their prison garb being recognized as convicts, they were taken by eight or nine men, who kept them till soldiers from the island arrived and conducted them back. The other three prisoners were taken the same day, and the eight were sentenced to receive thirty-nine lashes each, with the cat-o'nine-tails, for each of five counts against them; of which however, nearly half were remitted, one hundred lashes being received by each prisoner. The blacksmith's shop was now enlarged, and the prisoners, now about forty in number set to making wrought nails, Burroughs included, much against his will, for he was determined to oppose every effort to make him profitable to the authorities, and to defeat the whole business of making nails by the prisoners' labor; inciting his fellow-prisoners to break up the nail-rods into short pieces, and on every opportunity to throw the pieces into the waterpail, and to empty them into the prison well whenever they brought water. This trick was discovered within a few days, and stopped; and Burroughs' next plan was to induce the prisoners to rise upon their guards, when the doors were opened early in the morning for the prisoners to go out to work; the most of the garrison being at that time still asleep; Burroughs with the bravest ten engaging to disarm the guards, and twenty-five others to support the attack. Burroughs rushing forward succeeded in seizing the guns of two guards; but no one following, he ran back to the prison, where he was shackled, and received one hundred lashes, which were laid on so seriously as to disable him for nearly three months. This, perhaps for the first time in his life, brought Burroughs to his senses; thereafter he was on his good behavior; namely, from June, 1787, for above a year; his whole term being three years and five weeks.

About three weeks before his release, his uncle Ebenezer David, previously mentioned, brought him decent clothes, and enough money to provide for his wants till he could reach his uncle's home in Charlton, Mass. Burroughs had also received visits in the prison and many kindnesses from Captain Summers, his father's sister's son; and a consider

able degree of freedom-after he had shown that he would not abuse it, -from Major Perkins, the officer in command of the Castle Island garrison.

In September, 1788, he reached his uncle's farm, and began work with his uncle; and in November was engaged to teach a school in Charlton; yet the parents at first having some misgivings, sent only fifteen pupils; these misgivings were overcome, for Burroughs could be very smooth and pleasing when he chose, and his school increased in the two months of his term to eighty-four pupils. So abundant was this success that Burroughs was engaged for the coming year, having gained the complete confidence of his pupils; which he shamefully abused in the case of one of his girl pupils, by taking gross liberties with her when they two were for a little time after the afternoon session left alone in the school house; but persuading her to keep silence, by his solemn assurance that she should not suffer, since it should never be known. What peculiarly aggravates the case is the fact that Burroughs was already engaged and soon to be married to his uncle's daughter Sally; so that it was impossible to avoid injustice to both girls, or give full justice to either. The burden of the secret so wrought on the mind of the pupil, that at length she shared her secret. Burroughs did not fail to take advantage of her silence and delay, when about six months after the occurrence, he was charged with assault with intent to ravish, and held for trial at the next term of the Superior Court; and as his friends could not raise the bail of £500 he was lodged in jail. During the previous six months, however, he had been married to his cousin Sally. At Burroughs' trial, pleading the silence of the girl, he was exonerated from assault, but the first charge having brought up others, he was charged with and convicted of grossly lewd and lascivious conduct with a young woman and two girls, and was sentenced to receive one hundred and seventeen stripes on the bare back; to stand two hours in the pillory, and one hour on the gallows with a rope around his neck; then to be imprisoned for three months, procure bonds for good behavior for seven years, and pay the cost of prosecution. The distress this occasioned to his young and loyal bride cannot easily be measured. The imprisonment was in Worcester jail; but before the expiration of the three months, a company of his friends forced the jail door at midnight, and told him to depart. He tried to hasten to leave the State, but got lost in the darkness the next night, not daring to travel by day; the next day being very rainy he traveled, and at