3. The World Was an Open Book
Chapter 3
The World Was an Open Book
Adoniram sat nervously at his desk. The astronomy paper in front of him was the last of his entrance exams. It worried him as he looked around. The other students were still bent studiously over their work, but Adoniram could not find anything to add to his paper, and there was still an hour to go. He hoped he had not forgotten something important, and so he read over his answers one more time. Taking examinations was all he had done since arriving at Rhode Island College. So far he had taken Greek, Latin, mathematics, geography, logic, oratory, and philosophy exams. Astronomy was his last exam, and it would be a week before he knew whether he had passed. He hoped he had; otherwise he would not be admitted to the college and would be sent back home.
Finally, the teacher pulled a watch from his pocket and announced it was time to stop. Adoniram quickly handed in his test paper and went for a long walk to try to forget about all the exams.
A week later the results were posted. Adoniram’s heart sank as he read the list of freshman students for each subject. His name was not on any of the lists. Just as a cold sweat was breaking out on his forehead, his new friend, Jacob Eames, strolled over to the notice board. “Congratulations, Adoniram,” he said. “You’ve made quite an impact.”
Adoniram turned to Jacob. “What do you mean?” he asked, bewildered.
Jacob laughed. “You mean you don’t know? Look at this. You’ve made it into the sophomore classes. Your grades were so good that they’re letting you skip your freshman year. I haven’t heard of it being done before.”
Adoniram swung around and searched the list of sophomore classes. Sure enough, there was his name listed in the second-year classes. “I can hardly believe it!” he said. At this rate he would finish college in three years and not the usual four.
As time went by, Adoniram found he had no difficulty keeping up with a class of boys a year older than he. In fact, he was soon running neck and neck with his friend John Bailey for the honor of being top student in the class. Although this meant a lot of study for Adoniram, he managed to fit in fun times with his friends. John Bailey and Jacob Eames, his two best friends, were both from wealthy families, and they were invited to some of the most lavish parties in Providence. Adoniram was invited to go along with them, and he enjoyed mixing in such rich and intellectual circles. At one party he even met the extremely wealthy Nicholas Brown, who had just given an enormous sum of money to Rhode Island College—so much, in fact, that the college had changed its name to Brown University in honor of him.
Mr. Judson knew little of his son’s partying. All he had was a letter from Dr. Messer, the president of the university. Regarding Adoniram, Dr. Messer had written to Adoniram’s father, “A uniform propriety of conduct, as well as an intense application to study, distinguishes his character. Your expectations of him, however sanguine, must certainly be gratified. I most heartily congratulate you, my dear sir, on that charming prospect which you have exhibited in this very amiable and promising son.…”
Not only did Mr. Judson have no knowledge of Adoniram’s partying, he also had no idea of something he would have considered a hundred times worse. Adoniram’s friend Jacob Eames was a Deist. Jacob did not believe that the Christian religion was any more important or true than any other religion in the world. He believed there was a god, but that God had little or no interest in the lives of people. Many well-known people in 1806 were Deists, among them the inventor Benjamin Franklin and the great revolutionary writer Thomas Paine.
As Jacob and Adoniram talked about what they believed, Deism began to make a lot of sense to Adoniram, who decided to become a Deist himself, though he decided never to tell his father. That would put an end to his college career right then and there.
Not only did they talk about religion, Jacob Eames and Adoniram also spent many hours discussing their futures. What would they be? Where would they go? The world was an open book for a young man with a degree. They imagined themselves as senators, judges, even the president of the United States.
The three years at Brown University passed quickly and happily for Adoniram. During his last year, Adoniram set himself the goal of becoming valedictorian, first in his graduating class. His father heartily encouraged him in this pursuit. They were both upset, though, when money ran low and Adoniram had to drop out of college for six weeks to teach in Plymouth to earn the money needed to finish out the year at Brown. Still, Adoniram was a determined young man, and once back at college, he soon caught up on his missed courses. At the end of his senior year, he sent the shortest letter he had ever written home to his father. It read: “Dear Father, I have got it. Your affectionate son, A.J.” Of course, the “it” was the honor of being valedictorian. The entire Judson family glowed with pride as commencement was held on September 2, 1807.
Having graduated, Adoniram was expected to do something important, but what? He had no particular interests, so to fill in time while he planned his future, nineteen-year-old Adoniram went home and opened a small school, which he named the Plymouth Independent Academy. Dismayed by the poor quality of the textbooks available to his students, he wrote two of his own: Elements of English Grammar and The Young Lady’s Arithmetic. Both books were well written, and with the backing of the president of Brown University, both were published that year.
All of this should have made Adoniram proud, but it did not. He was bored. He was living with his family again, and his father expected him to take part in family Bible reading and prayer. Adoniram could hardly stand it as his father droned on from the Bible after each meal. He was a Deist and didn’t have time for such trivial things as Bible reading, though he dared not tell his father that.
Finally one day, when Adoniram was twenty years old, he decided he’d had enough of being a schoolteacher. He wanted to experience some of the excitement he and Jacob Eames had talked about so often in college. And when he asked himself where he would find such excitement, there was only one answer: New York City!
“New York?” his mother gasped, the color draining from her face. “You can’t be serious, Adoniram! Whatever would make you want to go there?”
“I forbid it!” snapped his father. “New York is a den of iniquity. No son of mine is going to New York.”
Adoniram stood beside the fire, staring at the kitchen wall. This was exactly the reaction he had expected. He knew his parents wouldn’t be able to accept his closing the school and moving away.
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.