y.

The elopement alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so
high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly
necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a
pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long
yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and
which he was sometimes disposed to abuse. He had declared in the most
ingenuous manner that she should never marry with his consent any man of
less fortune than her own would be; and on his consent rested the
prospect of her inheriting his property.

Julia and I, however, care little for money now, we cared still less
then; and her own little property and my own little salary made us
esteem ourselves entirely independent of the old gentleman and his will.

His intention respecting the poor girl's marriage was thundered in her
ears at least once a week, so that we both knew that I had no need to
make court to him, indeed, I had never seen him, always having met her
in walking, or in the evening at party, spectacle, concert, or lecture.
He had lately been more domineering than usual, and I had but little
difficulty in persuading the dear girl to let me write to Harry Barry,
to make the arrangement to which he assented in the letter which I have
copied above. The reasoning which I pressed upon her is obvious. We
loved each other,--the old gentleman could not help that; and as he
managed to make us very uncomfortable in Boston, in the existing state
of affairs, we naturally came to the conclusion that the sooner we
changed that state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we
supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it
would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of
maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's part, we
outvoted him.

I have said that I had no fortune to enable me to come near the old
gentleman's _beau ideal_ of a grandson-in-law. I was then living on my
salary as a South American editor. Does the reader know what that is?
The South American editor of a newspaper has the uncontrolled charge of
its South American news. Read any important commercial paper for a
month, and at the end of it tell me if you have any clear conception of
the condition of the various republics (!) of South America. If you
have, it is because that journal employs an individual for the sole
purpose of setting them in the cl