Mr. Jackson, (the father of Constance,) was the son of a man who had begun life in New York, at the very bottom of fortune’s wheel.  He was a native of Ireland, and came to this country very poor.  For some years, with his pack on his back, he gained a subsistence by vending dry-goods, and unimportant trifles, through the counties and small towns in the vicinity of New York.  Gradually he laid up dollar after dollar, until he was able to open a very small shop in Maiden Lane, a kind of thread-and-needle store.  Careful in his purchases, and constant in his attendance on business, he soon began to find his tens counting hundreds; and but few years rolled away, before his hundreds began to grow into thousands.  After a while he took a larger store, and suddenly became known. and respected as “a merchant.”  At the end of twenty years from the time he carried his pack out of New York, he could write himself worth fifty thousand dollars.  Success continued to crown his efforts in business, and when his children came on the stage of active life, they were raised to consider themselves as far superior to mere mechanics, or those who had to labour for their daily bread.

The father of Constance was the eldest son of old Mr. Jackson, and inherited from him a large share of haughty pride.  His wife was out of a family with notions equally aristocratic.  Constance was their only child, and they had bestowed no little care in endeavouring to make her the most accomplished young lady in New York.  They loved her tenderly, but pride divided with affection their interest in her.  She had already declined the hands of two young men of the first families in the city, much to the displeasure of both her parents, when she met Theodore Wilmer, who resided in the family of Mr. Wykoff, partner in the house that employed the young man in the capacity of clerk.  In this family, Constance visited regularly, and the intimacy which sprung up between the young couple, had a chance of maturing into a more permanent affection, before Mr. or Mrs. Jackson had the slightest suspicion of such an event.  Indeed, the first knowledge they had of the real state of affairs was obtained through Wilmer himself, in the form of an application for the hand of their daughter.  It was made to Mr. Jackson, on whom it fell with the unexpected suddenness of a flash from a clear sky in June.

“And pray, sir, who are you?” was his hasty and excited answer.

“Theodore Wilmer, clerk in the house of Rensselaer, Wykoff & Co.”

“Are you really in earnest, young man?” said Mr. Jackson, in a calmer voice, though his lips trembled with suppressed anger.

“Never more so in my life, sir.”

“And does my daughter know of this application?”

“She does.”

“And is it made by her consent?”

“Of course.”

The calm, and “of course” manner of the young man was more than the patience of Jackson could withstand.  Hardly able to contain the indignation that swelled within him, at the presumption of an unknown clerk, thus to ask the hand of his daughter, he paused but a moment, and then seizing Wilmer by the shoulder, and looking him steadily in the face, while he almost foamed with anger, replied thus to his last admission:—­