● ● ●  restlessness—ironically enough at the very time his wife’s energies were gathering toward that concentrated purpose that would emerge a few years later. From this time on they were moving in different directions.

The contrast was made all too clear when Patterson decided that he too would give a public lecture and turn his recent adventures into cash. The lecture was announced with some fanfare in the press; but on December 20, the day after it was to be given, the Eastern Argus announced: “For the benefit of our readers who may be asking ‘what became of the squirrel’ we would say that Dr. Patterson’s lecture, unlike that of his wife, proved a failure. According to the records he had only a small handful in attendance and abandoned the lecture.”¹⁰³

Before long they had both abandoned Portland; for on January 12, 1863, we find Mrs. Patterson writing Quimby from Sanbornton Bridge, where they were stopping with the Tiltons, “I eat, drink and am merry; have no laws to fetter my spirit now, though I am quite as much of an escaped prisoner as my dear husband was.” Patterson, she added, yearned to take up arms to serve his country, “and I shall try to acquiesce.”¹⁰⁴

Then it was that the unhealed past rose up again, and old ills began to return. Patterson could not bring himself either to enlist or to settle down to earning a living and providing a home for his wife. While he drifted around New England giving none too successful lectures on his prison experiences, Mrs. Patterson was again thrown on Abigail Tilton’s charity. In that difficult situation she lacked the tranquility to help herself, she wrote Quimby, and so began the series of appeals to him.¹⁰⁵

She persuaded Abigail to take her son Albert to Portland for treatment for smoking and drinking. The young man responded quickly to Quimby’s treatment, but as soon as he returned to Sanbornton the  ● ● ●