The Life and Adventures of Seth Wyman, Embodying the Principal Events of a Life Spent in Robbery, Theft, Gambling, Passing Counterfeit Money, &c., &c.

by Seth Wyman

The thoroughgoing bad nature of the author is well described in the title, and he admits that his life of crime began with shoplifting (at which he was quite adept) while barely into his teens. Most of his career was passed in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine, where even among a population renowned for its sharpness, he was able to find many a sucker. Wyman also recounts his sexual conquests, though the publisher admits that some of the salacious details have been excised. Born in 1784, Wyman died, in prison, just before the publication of this work. How much moralizing has been added by the publisher, it is impossible to tell, but he admits in the preface that he has published Wyman's recollections in order that readers "may see the heinousness and misery of crime, and thereby strengthen and render impregnable the noble purposes to resist temptation." But he also insists that the work is Wyman's alone, and the result is an entertaining and enlightening memoir of the life of a bad man.

310 pages, Unknown Binding

Published January 1, 1843

Reviews

[Osiris Oliphant · Rating 5 out of 5]

One man who received a ball in his bowels, dragged himself to the edge of a pond and took a canoe and crossed to a cranberry meadow on the other side. Here he lived on the berries, the juice of which, by oozing through the wound, soon healed it.

My parents had told me, incidentally, that cutting off the bark could kill even the largest tree, and that there was a state punishment attending such an offence.

This was sufficient inducement for me to undertake it immediately.

I continued the amusement of killing trees for some time, but at last was obliged to turn to some other source for roguery.

The discharge of guns and the rattling of drums possessed no charms for my disposition.

I was now in my fourteenth year, and began to feel some of the buddings of that dandyism, which the precocious youths of this generation are so forward in displaying.

BUT at this time, my attention was turned to another source of pleasure and mischief-the other sex. Our neighborhood was pretty well stocked with this kind of cattle, and some of them in good condition.

Every one wondered at my success. I completely mystified them.

In the meantime, I was committing depredations on a smaller scale in our neighbors' orchards and yards.
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As a last resort, I sprang over a fence into the woods. I sprang over logs and bushes with ease and agility.

My bundles of pork and beans I carried with me, as I intended to "find myself", according to yankee phraseology...

A walk of forty or fifty miles a day, was easily accomplished— much more easily than a fifth part of that distance by the silk-gloved non-entities of the present day.

Perhaps she was pure and thought not that the young man before her was even then concocting a plan to draw her only daughter into the vortex of his own passions. So it was.

I succeeded very well in enacting the Methodist, although occasionally I put in an amen or a groan in the wrong place, where the reverse should have been applied.

The reader will recollect that a person can live much longer in water that is lashed into a foam than in still water.

I struck out for a neighboring rock, which, as I was an excellent swimmer, I soon succeeded in reaching.

From this and various other experiments that I have unintentionally tried, I think that drowning is by far the easiest manner of suffering death.

Poultry and sheep I used as common property wherever I found them, and I believe that as many found their way into my hands as into those of the real owners.

This served to evaporate the extra steam on my temper, and I went on afterwards with more coolness.