Hoping to better his condition, in December, 1833, he left Farmington, and, with a pack on his back, made his way, on foot, to the town of Natick, Massachusetts, his present residence. Here he hired himself to a shoemaker, who agreed, for five months' service, to teach him the art of bottoming shoes. At the end of six weeks, Mr. Wilson bought his time, and went to work on his own account, at which employment he continued for more than two years, working so hard and incessantly that his health became seriously injured, and he was at length compelled to quit for a time the shoemaker's bench; and in May, 1836, he made a visit to Washington, where he remained for several weeks in regular attendance upon the debates in Congress. During his stay at the metropolis, Pinckney's Gag Resolutions were passed by the House of Representatives, and Calhoun's Incendiary Publication bill passed the Senate by the casting vote of the Vice-President, Martin Van Buren. The exciting debates to which he listened during this memorable period, and the scenes which he witnessed at Williams' slave-pen, to which he paid a visit, made Henry Wilson an anti-slavery man, and he returned to New England with the fixed resolution to do all in his power to advance the anti-slavery cause, and overthrow the influence of slavery in the nation. How steadily he has adhered to that resolution, his subsequent career bears ample witness. From Washington, Mr. Wilson returned to New Hampshire, and entered Stafford Academy as a student, on the first of July, 1836. In the autumn of that year, he attended the academy at Wolfsborough; and during the winter of 1837, taught school in that town. In the spring of 1837, he entered Concord Academy, where he remained six months. While there, he was chosen a delegate to the Young Men's Anti-slavery State Convention, before which body he made his first public speech in behalf of freedom. In the autumn, he returned to Wolfsborough Academy, and at the close of the academic term, went again to Natick, Mass., where he taught school during the winter of 1837-8. He had intended to continue for some time longer at school, and to commence a course of classical studies, but the failure of a friend, to whom he had intrusted the few hundred dollars his own hands had earned, left him penniless, and he was compelled to change his plans of life.