r 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 co