ttachment between us, for I have made my attention so open and so marked
that they all must have perceived it. I know that Lucretia must have had
some conversation with her mother on the subject, for she told me one
day, when I asked her what her mother thought of my constant visits, that
her mother said she 'didn't think I cared much about her,' in a pleasant
way. All the family have been extremely polite and attentive to me; I
received constant invitations to dinner and tea, indeed every
encouragement was given me....

"I painted two hasty sketches of scenery in Concord. I meet with no
success in Walpole. _Quacks_ have been before me."

There is always a touch of quaint, dry humor in his mother's letters in
spite of their great seriousness, as witness the following extracts from
a letter of September 9, 1816:--

"We hope you will feel more than ever the absolute necessity laid upon
you to procure for yourself and those you love a maintenance, as neither
of you can subsist long upon air.... Remember it takes a great many
hundred dollars to _make_ and to _keep_ the pot a-boiling.

"I wish to see the young lady who has captivated you so much. I hope she
loves religion, and that, if you and she form a connection for life, some
_five or six years hence_, you may go hand in hand to that better world
where they neither marry nor are given in marriage....

"You have not given us any satisfaction in respect to many things about
the young lady which you ought to suppose we should be anxious to know.
All you have told us is that she is handsome and amiable. These are good
as far as they go, but there are a great many etcs., etcs., that we want
to know.

"Is she acquainted with domestic affairs? Does she respect and love
religion? How many brothers and sisters has she? How old are they? Is she
healthy? How old are her parents? What will they be likely to do for her
some years hence, say when she is twenty years old?

"In your next answer at least some of these questions. You see your
mother has not lived twenty-seven years in New England without learning
to ask questions."

These questions he had already answered in a letter which must have
crossed his mother's.

On September 23, 1816, he writes from Windsor, Vermont:--

"I am still here but shall probably leave in a week or two. I long to get
home, or, at least, as far on my way as _Concord_. I think I shall be
tempted to stay a week or two there.... I do not like Win