found in the humble cottage than beneath the palace roof."

Belmont appeared enchanted with this encouraging avowal. The next
day, after cautioning his friend Charley to say nothing of his actual
circumstances, he called on the widow Heathcote and her fair daughter
in the character of the "poor gentleman." The widow had very 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?"