different
notions from her romantic offspring, and when Belmont candidly
confessed his poverty on soliciting permission to address Julia, he
was very politely requested to change the subject, and never mention
it again.

The result of all this manoeuvring was an elopement; the belle of
the ball jumping out of a chamber window on a shed, and coming down a
flight of steps to reach her lover, for the sake of being romantic,
when she might just as well have walked out of the front door.

The happy couple passed a day in New York city, and then Frank took
his beloved to his "cottage."

An Irish hack conveyed them to a miserable shanty in the environs of
New York, where they alighted, and Frank, escorting the bride into the
apartment which served for parlor, kitchen, and drawing room, and was
neither papered nor carpeted, introduced her to his mother, much in
the way Claude Melnotte presents Pauline. The old woman, who was
peeling potatoes, hastily wiped her hands and face with a greasy
apron, and saluted her "darter," as she called her, on both cheeks.

"Can it be possible," thought Julia, "that this vulgar creature is my
Belmont's mother?"

"Frank!" screamed the old woman, "you'd better go right up stairs and
take off them clothes--for the boy's been sent arter 'em more'n fifty
times. Frank borried them clothes, ma'am," she added to Julia, by way
of explanation, "to look smart when he went down east."

The bridegroom retired on this hint, and soon reappeared in a pair of
faded nankeen pantaloons, reaching to about the calf of the leg, a
very shabby black coat, out at the elbows, a ragged black vest, and,
instead of his varnished leather boots, a pair of immense cowhide
brogans.

"Now," said he, sitting quietly down by the cooking stove, "I begin to
feel at home. Ah! this is delightful, isn't it, dearest?" and he
warbled,--

"Though never so humble, there's no place like home."

Julia's heart swelled so that she could not utter a word.

"Dearest," said Frank, "I think you told me you had no objection to
smoking?"

"None in the least," said the bride; "I rather like the flavor of a
cigar."

"O, a cigar!" replied Belmont; "that would never do for a poor man."

And O, horror! he produced an old clay pipe, and filling it from a
little newspaper parcel of tobacco, began to smoke with a keen relish.

"Dinner! dinner!" he exclaimed at length; "ah! thank you, mother; I'm
as hungry as a bear. Codfish and potat