NEW hl^n IN A NEW LAND 57 



stances attending his departure were unhappy 

 and mysterious. The trouble grew out of an affair 

 of the heart, but more than this is not clear. On 

 the 1st of May, 1801, in a short, rather disconnected 

 letter, he wrote to his friend, Charles Orr, a Scotch 

 schoolmaster of Philadelphia: "I have matters to 

 lay before you that have almost distracted me. * 

 * * I have no friend but yourself, and one whose 

 friendship has involved us both in ruin, or threatens 

 to do so." Six weeks later he moved to Bloomfield, 

 New Jersey, utterly disgusted with everything in 

 America, and from here he pleaded with Orr to re- 

 turn with him to ''Caledonia." He was anxious 

 to know just what was said of him at Milestown 

 without any one's learning where he was, and he 

 begged Orr with pathetic earnestness to find out 



''how Mrs. is." Again he wrote, "As to the 



reports at Milestown, were I alone the subject of 

 them they would not disturb me, but she who loves 

 me dearer than her own soul, whose image is for- 

 ever with me, whose heart is broken for her friend- 

 ship to me, she must bear all with not one friend 

 to whom she dare unbosom her sorrows. Of all 

 the events of my life nothing gives me such inex- 

 pressible misery as this." Over and over he be- 

 sought his friend to find out the condition of this 

 unknown lady, but he always cautioned him to let 

 no one know his address. It seems to have been an 

 attachment which grew between Wilson and a lady 

 already married; but Wilson appears to have left 

 the place with honor and discretion as soon as he 

 realized its existence. 



Nearly all of the biographers have dwelt on the 



