an of good
family, and some estate, who had emigrated to America and married, under
the impulse of certain theories in politics which induced him to imagine
that this was the promised land. I remember him as a disappointed and
dissatisfied widower, who was thought to be daily growing poorer under
the consequences of indiscreet investments, and who at last got to be so
very English in his wishes and longings, as to assert that the common
Muscovy was a better bird than the canvas-back! He died, however, in
time to leave his only child an estate which, under my uncle's excellent
management, was known by me to be rather more than one hundred and
seventy-nine thousand dollars, and which produced a nett eight thousand
a-year. This made Miss Henrietta a belle at once; but, having a prudent
friend in my grandmother, as yet she had not married a beggar. I knew
that uncle Ro went quite as far as was proper, in his letters, in the
way of hints touching myself; and my dear, excellent, honest-hearted,
straightforward old grandmother had once let fall an expression, in one
of her letters to myself, which induced me to think that these hints had
actually awakened as much interest in the young lady's bosom, as could
well be connected with what was necessarily nothing but curiosity.

Miss Anne Marston was also an heiress, but on a very diminished scale.
She had rather more than three thousand a-year in buildings in town, and
a pretty little sum of about sixteen thousand dollars laid by out of its
savings. She was not an only child, however, having two brothers, each
of whom had already received as much as the sister, and each of whom, as
is very apt to be the case with the heirs of New York merchants, was
already in a fair way of getting rid of his portion in riotous living.
Nothing does a young American so much good, under such circumstances, as
to induce him to travel. It makes or breaks at once. If a downright
fool, he is plucked by European adventurers in so short a time, that the
agony is soon over. If only vain and frivolous, because young and
ill-educated, the latter being a New York endemic, but with some
foundation of native mind, he lets his whiskers grow, becomes fuzzy
about the chin, dresses better, gets to be much better mannered, soon
loses his taste for the low and vulgar indulgences of his youth, and
comes out such a gentleman as one can only make who has entirely thrown
away the precious moments of youth. If tolerably ed