She then asked herself the state of her own heart. Ambitious though she was, she was too true and honest a woman to give her hand without her heart; and after a brief, but careful consultation with herself, decided that she could in all honesty take him “for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer.” In a worldly point of view it was the chance of a lifetime. The rich and rising merchant of the great city proposing to make her, the daughter of a village tailor, the future partner of his greatness. Letty was not insensible to this—we will not say she was grateful for it; she had too just an appreciation of her own merits to be so; but she was not blind to its advantages in a worldly point of view. Had it occurred some two years sooner, all the aristocracy of Middlebury would have cried out “shame;” but now it was received as a thing of course, and Smithson was warmly congratulated on his admirable taste. It was decided by Letty, and confirmed by Smithson, that in order to secure high social position, a good start was necessary. There must be no false step, no blunder at the outset. How many apparently promising fortunes has this one false step marred. He accordingly took a good house in the most desirable part of Hazelnut street, the very centre and focus of fashion in Quakerdelphia. To furnish the house was in those days the business of the wife, and Letty determined to disburse the, for his situation, very considerable dower her father could give her, in fitting up her new mansion, leaving it to her future lord and master to furnish the sinews of war for carrying on the ensuing campaigns. Accompanied by her former preceptress, the assistance of whose taste she had evoked, Letty proceeded on her first visit to “the city.” We shall not stop to describe her first sensations on entering so large a place. Reading and descriptions had given her a pretty correct idea of what a city was, and she did not, like another country-girl we have heard of, complain “that she could not see the town for the houses.” Let not this be considered an exaggeration, for the reverse of the case occurred in our own presence a very few years since. We were at a country-house a few miles from the city, when a friend of its owner arrived there, accompanied by one of her children, a lovely little girl of some five years of age. From some cause or other she had never since she could remember been in the country before, and delighted with all she saw—the trees, the green fields, the flowers, she hurried with a smiling face to her mother, exclaiming—“Oh, mamma, is this indeed the real country?”