"Mr. Van Arsdel, I love your daughter. She has honored me so far as to accept of my love, and I have her permission to ask your consent to our marriage." He took off his spectacles, wiped them deliberately while I was speaking, and coughed drily. "Mr. Henderson," he said, "I have always had a great respect for you so far as I knew you, but I must confess I don't know why I should want to give you my daughter." "Simply, sir, because in the order of nature you must give her to somebody, and I have the honor to be chosen by her." "Eva could do better, her mother thinks." "I am aware that Miss Van Arsdel could marry a man with more money than I have, but none who would love her more or be more devoted to her happiness. Besides I have the honor to be the man of her choice, and perhaps you may be aware that Miss Eva is a young lady of very decided preferences." He smiled drily, and looked at me with a funny twinkle in his eye. "Eva has always been used to having her own way," he remarked. "Then, my dear sir, I must beg leave to say that the choice of a companion for life is a place where a lady has a good right to insist on her own way." "Well, Mr. Henderson, you may be right. But perhaps her parents ought to insist that she shall not make an imprudent marriage." "Mr. Van Arsdel, I do not conceive that I am proposing an imprudent marriage. I have not wealth to offer, it is true, but I have a reasonable prospect of being able to support a wife and family. I have good firm health, I have good business habits, I have a profession which already assures me a certain income, and an influential position in society." "What do you call your profession?" "Literature," I replied. He looked skeptical, and I added--"Yes, Mr. Van Arsdel, in our day literature is a profession in which one may hope for both fame and money." "It is rather an uncertain one, isn't it?" said he. "I think not. A business which proposes to supply a great, permanent, constantly increasing demand you must admit to be a good one. The demand for current reading is just as wide and steady as any demand of our life, and the men who undertake to supply it have as certain a business as those that undertake to supply cotton cloth, or railroad iron. At this day fortunes are being made in and by literature." Mr. Van Arsdel drummed on the table abstractedly. "Now," said I, determined to speak in the language of men and things, "the case is just this: If a young man of good, reliable habits, good health, and good principles, has a capital of seventy thousand dollars invested in a fair paying business, has he not a prospect of supporting a family in comfort?" "Yes," said Mr. Van Arsdel, regarding me curiously, "I should call that a good beginning."