The old stage which plied between Middlebury and the city of Quakerdelphia, one day landed as a passenger at the former place a young man of some thirty years of age. Whether business or pleasure attracted him thither is of no consequence to this story, although from the character of the man it was more probably the former. At the age of sixteen John Smithson found himself an apprentice in a dry-goods store of Quakerdelphia. He had come thither with a sound constitution, a good, solid English education, such as was then less frequently obtained in country schools than now is; great industry and indomitable perseverance. These last traits had early attracted the attention of his acquaintance, and his success in whatever he should undertake predicted. He soon attracted the attention and confidence of his employers, and the respective grades of apprentice, clerk, and junior partner were attained by him. In the mercantile world he had for some time been noted for his intimate acquaintance with and complete knowledge of business, and for the integrity, straightforwardness and manliness of his character, and no one was surprised when the senior member of the firm retired a year before, that it took the title of Jones, Smithson & Co. John Smithson had achieved mercantile distinction. Wealth had commenced flowing in upon him in a continuous and unbroken stream, and a few years would in all probability see him among the richest merchants of his adopted city. But social distinctions were wanting to him. In his younger days he had been too busy to think of matrimony, or indeed, of female society at all. He was too much engaged in achieving the position he now occupied to care much for aught else, and his intercourse with men had rubbed off the awkward angles of the raw country lad. Still the want of refined female society had necessarily left him without that polish which can be derived from it alone. He occupied then no social position. His home connection was respectable, and his growing wealth would enable him to take a place among the magnates about him; all his future, then, depended on his choice of a wife; for he began about this time to be cognizant of the fact that it was high time for him to marry.