"You need feel no doubt of my being able to offer to your daughter a position of comfort and respectability," he said. "Ihave a settled income of eight hundred pounds a year."His raptures over Felicia; his protestations that she was the first woman he had ever really loved; his profane declaration that he preferred to die, if I refused to let him be her husband--all these flourishes, as I may call them, passed in at one of my ears and out at the other. But eight hundred pounds sterling per annum, descending as it were in a golden avalanche on the mind of a Scottish minister (accustomed to thirty years'annual contemplation of seventy-four pounds)--eight hundred a year, in one young man's pocket, I say, completely overpowered me. I just managed to answer, "Wait till tomorrow" --and hurried out of doors to recover my self-respect, if the thing was to be anywise done. I took my way through the valley. The sun was shining, for a wonder. When I saw my shadow on the hillside, Isaw the Golden Calf as an integral part of me, bearing this inscription in letters of flame--"Here's another of them!"_November 30th._--I have made amends for yesterday's backsliding;I have acted as becomes my parental dignity and my sacred calling.
