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 clearest order before you, and that individual is its South American editor.  The general-news editor of the paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition.  If he does, he fails.  It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons, that any American news office which has a strong regard for the consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ some person competent to take the charge which I held in the establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I am speaking.  Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its “South American man”; this being my only employment, excepting that by a special agreement, in consideration of an addition to my salary, I was engaged to attend to the news from St. Domingo, Guatemala, and Mexico.[F]

Monday afternoon, just a fortnight after I received Harry Barry’s letter, in taking my afternoon walk round the Common, I happened to meet Julia.  I always walked in the same direction when I was alone.  Julia always preferred to go the other way; it was the only thing in which we differed.  When we were together I always went her way of course, and liked it best.