broker, of moderate business
capacity, little education, and of plain manners, partaking of the
rustic simplicity of his original employment--he was, in early life, a
farmer in one of the western counties of New York. With less talent
and more cunning, he might have become a very rich man, at short
notice; but being brought up in an old-fashioned school of morality,
he could never learn to dignify swindling by the epithet of smartness,
nor consider overreaching his neighbor a "fair business transaction."
Hence he plodded along the even tenor of his way, contented with
moderate profits, and satisfied with the prospect of becoming
independent by slow degrees.

But in an evil hour, during a fortnight's relaxation at the Catskill
Mountain House, this steady and respectable gentleman, at the mature
age of thirty-five, quite an old bachelor indeed, fell desperately in
love with a dashing girl of twenty, the orphan daughter of a bankrupt
ship chandler. Miss Maria Manners was highly educated; that is, she
could write short notes on perfumed billet paper, without making any
orthographical or grammatical mistakes, had taken three quarters'
lessons of a French barber, could work worsted lapdogs and embroider
slippers, danced like a sylph, and played on the piano indifferently
well. She had visited the Catskills on a matrimonial speculation, and
made a dead set at poor Brandon. Of course with his experience in the
ways of women, he fell a ready dupe to the fascinating wiles of Miss
Manners. She kept him in an agony of suspense for a week, during every
evening of which she waltzed with a young lieutenant of dragoons, who
was playing billiards and drinking champagne on a sick leave, until
she could hear from a fabulous guardian at Philadelphia, and obtain
his consent to a sacrifice of her brilliant prospects--nothing a year
and a very suspicious account at a fashionable milliner's.

Mr. Brandon went down to the city, purchased a snug house, furnished
it modestly, gave a liberal order on his tailor, and one memorable
morning, might have been seen looking very uncomfortable, in a white
satin stock and kids, beside a lady elegantly dressed in satin and
blonde lace, while a portly clergyman pronounced his sentence in the
shape of a marriage benediction.

There was a snug wedding breakfast in the new house, at which were
present several eminent apple speculators from Fulton market, two or
three bank clerks, and a reporter for a weekly