poor woman put
on her bonnet and shawl, and started at once for the office of the
_news_paper. The publisher was just closing his sanctum, but he gave the
information the widow required, and favorably impressed with Mrs.
Glenn's appearance and manner, the publisher, a quaker, interrogated her
on various points of her present condition, prospects, &c.; and
observed, that but for her children, he had no doubt of the widow's
suiting the old man exactly.

"But thee must not be neglected, or discarded from honest industry,
because of thy responsibilities, which God hath given thee," said the
quaker. "If thy lad is stout of his age, and a good boy, I will provide
for him; he may learn our business, and be off thy charge, and thee may
be enabled to keep thy two female children about thee."

On the following Monday, the widow signified her intention of writing a
few lines as an applicant for the situation of housekeeper, and
afterwards to consult with the publisher in regard to her boy, Martin,
and then bidding the courteous quaker farewell, she sought her humble
domicil, with a much lighter heart than she had lately carried from her
distressed and lonely home.

In an ancient part of the Quaker city, facing the broad and beautiful
Delaware river, stood a venerable mansion; but few of this class now
remain in Philadelphia, and the one of which we now speak, but recently
passed away, in the great conflagration that visited the city in 1850.
In this substantial and stately brick edifice, lived one of the wealthy
and retired ship brokers of Quakerdom. He was very wealthy, very
eccentric, very good-hearted, but passionate, plethoric, gouty, and
seventy years of age. Mr. Job Carson had lived long and seen much; he
had been so engrossed in clearing his fortune, that from twenty-five to
forty, he had not bethought him of that almost indispensable appendage
to a man's comfort in this world--a wife. He was the next ten years
considering the matter over, and then, having built and furnished
himself a costly mansion, which he peopled with servants, headed by a
maiden sister as housekeeper, Job thought, upon the whole--to which his
sister added her strong consent--that matrimony would greatly increase
his cares, and perhaps add more _noise_ and confusion to his household,
than it might counterbalance or offset by probable comfort in "wedded
happiness," so temptingly set forth to old bachelors.

"No," said Job, at fifty, "I'll not marry,