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Perry’s sharp wit often bettered his critics. On one occasion a local minister met Perry upon the road and asked: “Perry, why don’t you shave and not go around looking like the Devil?” To which Perry replied: “Reverend Mr. Bascom, are you not mistaken in your comparison of personages? I have never seen a picture of the ruler of the sulphurous regions with much of a beard, but if I remember correctly, Jesus wore a beard.”
    Cousin William laughed again, and this time we joined him. But we felt troubled still, and Tom opined that persecutions of anyone adopting an appearance or viewpoint a little different from his neighbors must still flame forth in New England, as in olden times.
    â€œOh, I imagine some things change little enough with time, Tom, whatever else changes,” William said in good humor. “Old Perry is hooted in the street, talked about in the grocery, and mothers frighten unruly children with threats of him. And I suppose it is all a most unworthy turn of events, considering that Perry’s father fought in the Revolution and he himself was a soldier in 1812. In fact, nobody’s more steadfast or works harder.”
    â€œAnd I’ll wager,” Tom said, “that the old crosspatch will live to see whiskers back in fashion!”
    â€œNo doubt, Tom. But they don’t much care for his opinions either—abolition, abstemiousness. He has always refused, for example, to furnish liquor for his hired men in the hay field, and for that is reviled and ever on the search for new laborers. And, some even say, nakedness. He propounds the health of nakedness.”
    William’s words recalled to me for an instant the memory of my dear husband, lying of a warm summer’s night upon our bed—beautiful in the moonlight, tumescent, waiting for me to join him. I discovered after our marriage this willingness to be quite naked in the heat of summer after dark.
    Many times during that night, I recalled my husband, our happiness and sweet passions, but the next morning my feelings were distracted by more news of Mr. Perry. Mary, William’s wife, had heard among the gossips that Perry had been charged with unprovoked assault, refused to pay his fine as unjust, and so had been sentenced to jail for a year. How, I wondered, can courts and the public be so unenlightened even in our own time? Must we give up the cherished idea of human progress?

FOUR
    My captivity continues
    S uch memories filled my long, empty days now. I had come to realize that there was a certain routine in my captive hours: two light meals every day, a bath twice a week on the first floor, infrequent comings and goings of Mrs. Moore and her Ethiopian associate, Reggie, and hours of watching the street below from my window. There was to be sure a crushing boredom about it, yet also a constant, almost debilitating apprehension. I found my mind growing more active every day, as if to compensate for my sedentary flesh. Without paints, brushes, canvas; without reading material of any sort, however puerile or common; without even so much as a diary or scraps of paper to rig one up, I had all the more to fall back upon the resources of memory and thought.
    My retreats to this inner life were interrupted only by the routines I have described and, I soon came to see, by weekly evening visits from Joseph Dudley. Each visit seemed similar to the last, his ominous, calm, rational appeals for our intimacy and my refusals to respond so long as he kept me in subjugation. I believe it was after his third visit that I found a book lying on my bedside table upon waking the next morning. At first I felt discomfiture that someone had entered and stood by me as I slept. But taking up the book—there were no words printed upon the morocco cover or spine—I opened it to the title page and found Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure .
    I had longed for material of any sort to read. Over the years I had become