His mother sat down in a high-backed chair and in a gentle voice tried to coax her son not to follow through with his plans. “Adoniram, what’s wrong with being a schoolteacher? You have a good reputation with the parents of your students. More boys are ready to enroll next year. Within five years you could be running the largest academy in Plymouth.”
“Being a schoolteacher isn’t for me, Mother.” Adoniram replied gently. “I liked it well enough for a year, but it isn’t something I would want to make my career.”
“Well, if being a schoolteacher isn’t to your liking, enter the ministry, son,” interjected his father. “It was good enough for me, and it should be good enough for you. What about it? Are you man enough to step into your father’s shoes?”
Adoniram felt his blood pressure rising. A pastor? Didn’t his parents understand him at all? In a flash of rage he opened his mouth, and the words flowed out. “I would rather go to hell than be a pastor. But if you must know, I don’t believe in hell or heaven, or your God, or any of your petty little doctrines. I am a Deist, and I have been so for three years.”
The kitchen was completely silent. Adoniram’s father’s eyes bulged, his mother’s mouth gaped. Elnathan unwittingly walked into the room, took one look at his parents’ faces, and fled. A full minute ticked by. Finally, just as Adoniram thought he would have to do something to break the awful silence, his father spoke. It was as though a dam had burst within him. He strode over to his son, looked him squarely in the eyes, and asked in a growl, “Who did this to you? Was it one of your professors at Brown? Give me his name, and I’ll see he’s strung up by his thumbs!”
Mr. Judson ranted on for several minutes and then all at once calmed down. “Abigail,” he said, turning to his wife, “please leave the room. I have something I wish to discuss with Adoniram.”
Adoniram’s mother quickly stood and left, mopping away the tears that streamed down her cheeks. All afternoon and into the evening Mr. Judson argued with his son. Point by point he went through the beliefs of the Deists, trying to poke holes in their arguments. But after several hours, he shrugged his shoulders. “For every point I raise, you raise a better one,” he finally told Adoniram. “Your teachers at Brown University have taught you well. You argue with logic and clarity. But I will tell you one thing. No matter how good your arguments are, you are wrong. We will not discuss this again, but I pray one day you will find out the truth for yourself.” With that he lit his pipe and stared blankly at the fire.
Adoniram got up and left the room. He should have felt very smug at that moment. He had flexed his intellectual muscles against his father and had won hands down, but his mother made feeling smug impossible. While his father had relied on logical thinking to try to win back Adoniram, Mrs. Judson cried and pleaded with her son. Every moment Adoniram was at home she followed him around, praying that God would help him to see the truth.
Adoniram could take the pressure of his mother’s tears for only so long. After six days of her following him around, he packed a few belongings into a saddlebag, mounted a horse, and in mid-August 1808 headed west into country he had never seen before.
As he rode into the countryside, Adoniram was fascinated with the new landscape. He loved the rolling hills sparsely dotted with farms. In Springfield he stopped to eat bread by the Connecticut River. As the day progressed, a plan developed in his mind. He would ride to Sheffield and spend the night with his Uncle Ephraim. He would leave his horse there and walk to Albany, New York. Waiting at Albany was a strange new invention Adoniram had read about: the Clermont, Robert Fulton’s steamboat. It was said to be the first successful steamboat in the world. It went all the way from Albany down the Hudson River to New York City. Adoniram even gave some thought as he rode as to what he might do once he got to New York. He and Jacob Eames had often talked about becoming famous American playwrights, and Adoniram decided this would be his golden opportunity. New York was known for its theater district and great variety of entertainment.
When Adoniram finally stepped ashore onto Manhattan Island at the mouth of the Hudson River, one hundred sixty miles downriver from Albany, he already had the ideas for several plays running through his mind. He felt sure that all he needed was to hook up with a suitable group of ambitious young men like himself and he would go far in the new life he had chosen for himself.
A week later, Adoniram was not so sure about things. He had not met any young men he thought creative or witty and in desperation had joined a group of roving players. These men were uneducated and unscrupulous. Since none of them earned a steady income, their main entertainment was finding new ways to cheat others. One of their favorite scams was to arrange lodging at one of the hundreds of flea-infested flophouses around the dock area and sneak out before dawn without paying their bill. Adoniram felt guilty doing this, but what else could he do? He had no money of his own to rent a decent room, and his dreams of earning money as a playwright were dissolving fast. Many people told him the New York theaters were having their worst year ever financially, and unless he could juggle or do acrobatics, he had little hope of finding a job in one of them.
Adoniram persevered for a month—a month of sleeping in a succession of lumpy beds or on hard parlor floors, a month of eating oatmeal three times a day, and a month of hearing over and over that there were no openings in the theater for a twenty-year-old with no experience in playwriting or directing. By the middle of September, he’d had enough. His dream of taking New York by storm, of being the Shakespeare of the United States, was in tatters. Adoniram wanted nothing more than to escape the noise, overcrowding, and filth of New York and to seek his fortune elsewhere. As he packed his few belongings into a bag, he had just one thing on his mind: He would collect his horse from his uncle in Sheffield and head farther west. There, he was convinced, lay his path of opportunity.
Chapter 4
Questions
Since this time Adoniram did not have enough money for the luxury of a steamboat ride, he set out on the long walk up the Hudson River valley to his uncle’s home, where he planned to collect his horse. He slept in haystacks and worked for farmers in exchange for meals. As he made his way, he wondered what had gone wrong. He had set out from Plymouth with such high hopes, but they had all come to nothing. He wondered also what had become of Jacob Eames. Together they had made so many plans, and now Adoniram was without any plan. He had tried everything he thought would make him happy, but nothing had. He was sure that somehow things had worked out better for Jacob Eames. Jacob was probably working for some important law firm by now, well on his way to becoming a famous attorney or even a senator.
Finally, after several days of walking, Adoniram arrived back in Sheffield. His horse was there, but not his uncle. Instead he was met at the parsonage door by a man just a few years older than he. The young man introduced himself as a newly ordained minister who had been sent to fill in for his uncle for two weeks while he was away on business. He invited Adoniram to spend the night, and since the sun was already setting over the Catskill Mountains, Adoniram accepted the invitation.
Later that evening after dinner, the conversation turned to religion. Adoniram was used to arguing about religion with his friends at college and with his father, but this young pastor was different. While Adoniram could hold his own in the conversation, deep down he had to admit the young man had something he longed for. The young pastor seemed to have a direction for his life and peace of mind. Later that night, as he lay on a soft, flealess mattress for the first time in weeks, Adoniram wondered whether he could accept the kind of religion the young pastor had. After thinking about if for some time, he finally rolled over, pulled the blanket tight around himself, and decided he couldn’t.
The following day, Adoniram left a note thanking his uncle for keeping his horse, said farewell to the young pastor, and set off westward. Fall had come early that year, and he was fascinated with the waves of red and gold leaves that bobbed in the wind for as far as he could see. He rode on all day, and at nightfall he came to a small village. Adoniram tied up his horse at the local inn and went in to rent the cheapest room available for the night.
Inside Adoniram found a man with enormous hands pouring ale for customers who were seated around the bar and at tables dotted throughout the smoke-filled room. Adoniram guessed the man was the innkeeper and walked over to him. “Good evening, sir,” he began. “I was wondering if you have a room for a weary traveler.”
The man finished pouring a tankard of ale before turning to face Adoniram. “A weary traveler? And where might you be coming from?” he asked.
“Sheffield,” replied Adoniram.
The innkeeper raised his eyebrows. “That’s quite a ride you’ve had, but unfortunately the inn is full.”
“Full?” repeated Adoniram, before breaking into a smile as he thought about all the rat holes in which he had slept in New York City. “I can assure you, sir, I’m not picky. Isn’t there a bed somewhere I could sleep in, or even a mat by a fire? I don’t know these parts, and I’m reluctant to ride on after dark.”
“And so you should be,” replied the innkeeper. “There’s been some bad things happening after dark in these parts.” He squinted at Adoniram. “I’ll tell you what. I have a room, partitioned off with a sheet. One half is already occupied, has been all week, by a dying man. He needs to be attended to through the night, and he groans in pain. If you can stand the noise, the other half of the room is available. It even has a bed.”
Adoniram grinned. “Thank you. I’ve ridden hard today, and I can assure you nothing will keep me awake tonight!”
But he was wrong. Once he had fed and watered his horse and had eaten dinner, Adoniram climbed the stairs to his half of the room. He lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling crossbeams, unable to fall sleep. Through the sheet that partitioned the room he could hear the footsteps of people coming and going and the loud groans of a man and the whispers of a woman.
In the distance a bell rang out midnight, and then one o’clock, and still Adoniram had not managed to fall asleep. When the bell struck three o’clock, he found himself thinking about the man in the other half of the room. Who was he? Had he done everything he wanted to in his life? Did he know he was dying, and did he fear death? Then he began asking himself the same questions. In the dark, miles from home, and without any plan for his future, Adoniram’s Deist beliefs, which had seemed so fine in college, were empty and joyless. He thought about the young pastor at his uncle’s house, and he envied the man’s sense of purpose in life.
After a while he switched his thoughts back to the dying man. Where would he be buried? Did he believe in life after death, or did he think his soul would rot right along with his body? After letting his mind wander down these paths for nearly an hour, Adoniram came to his senses. What was he thinking? He was an intelligent young man, college valedictorian, and winner of debates and arguments. He could almost hear Jacob Eames laughing at him for indulging in such pointless thinking.
Finally, at about four o’clock, there was silence on the other side of the sheet, and Adoniram finally drifted off to sleep. As he slept he dreamt of skeletons dancing on graves and ghosts laughing at him. He was glad when the sun rose and it was time to get up. He collected his things and prepared himself for the next leg of his journey westward.
“Is it too late for breakfast?” he asked the innkeeper at the bottom of the stairs, noticing the room was almost empty.
