The misfortune of the Miscellany, I suppose, was that its publishers had no capital.  They had to resort to the claptraps of fashion-plates and other engravings, in the hope of forcing an immediate sale upon persons who, caring for fashion-plates, did not care for the literary character of the enterprise.  It gave a very happy escape-pipe, however, for the high spirits of some of us who had just left college, and, through my brother’s kindness, I was sometimes permitted to contribute to the journal.  In memory of those early days of authorship, I select “The South American Editor” to publish here.  For the benefit of the New York Observer, I will state that the story is not true.  And lest any should complain that it advocates elopements, I beg to observe, in the seriousness of mature life, that the proposed elopement did not succeed, and that the parties who proposed it are represented as having no guardians or keepers but themselves.  The article was first published in 1842.]

* * * * *

It is now more than six years since I received the following letter from an old classmate of mine, Harry Barry, who had been studying divinity, and was then a settled minister.  It was an answer to a communication I had sent him the week before.

    “TOPSHAM, R.I.  January 22, 1836.

“To say the truth, my dear George, your letter startled me a little.  To think that I, scarcely six months settled in the profession, should be admitted so far into the romance of it as to unite forever two young runaways like yourself and Miss Julia What’s-her-name is at least curious.  But, to give you your due, you have made a strong case of it, and as Miss ——­ (what is her name, I have not yours at hand) is not under any real guardianship, I do not see but I am perfectly justified in complying with your rather odd request.  You see I make a conscientious matter of it.

“Write me word when it shall be, and I will be sure to be ready.  Jane is of course in my counsels, and she will make your little wife feel as much at home as in her father’s parlor.  Trust us for secrecy.

    “I met her last week—­”

But the rest of the letter has nothing to do with the story.

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.