Note 3 — Chapter I · EARLY YEARS. 1788-1809.
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The natural tenderness of the sister from whom some of these reminiscences have been derived, has cast a mantle of charity over this episode in Mr. Judson’s life. There is reason to believe that his course was more wayward than is here indicated.
An English gentleman who, many years after, was his fellow-prisoner in Ava, writes as follows: “I will give the story as I heard it from the actor’s own mouth, and as nearly as I can recollect them, in his words: ‘In my early days of wildness I joined a band of strolling players. We lived a reckless, vagabond life, finding lodgings where we could, and bilking the landlord where we found opportunity—in other words, running up a score, and then decamping without paying the reckoning. Before leaving America, when the enormity of this vicious course rested with a depressing weight on my mind, I made a second tour over the same ground, carefully making amends to all whom I had injured.’”
This, though rather a coarse statement of the case, seems to the author in the main truthful. The author does not wish to gloze over this episode in Mr. Judson’s life. Such a wrong course, succeeded by thorough repentance and reparation, he thinks quite characteristic of Mr. Judson’s positive nature.