In the same letter his father says: "In regard to the subject on which you ask our advice, we refer it, after the experience you have had, and with the advice you have often had from us, to your own judgment. Be not hasty in entering into any engagement; enquire with caution and delicacy; do everything that is honorable and gentlemanly respecting yourself and those concerned. 'Pause, ponder, sift.—Judge before friendship—then confide till death.' (Young.) Above all, commit the subject to God in prayer and ask his guidance and blessing. I am glad to find you are doing this."
How well he obeyed his father's injunctions may be gathered from the following letter, which speaks for itself:—
CONCORD, September 2, 1816.
MY DEAR PARENTS,—I have just received yours of August 29. I leave town to-morrow morning, probably for Hanover, as there is no conveyance direct to Walpole.
I have had no more portraits since I wrote you, so that I have received just one hundred dollars in Concord. The last I took for ten dollars, as the person I painted obtained four of my sitters for me….
With respect to the confidential affair, everything is successful beyond my most sanguine expectations. The more I know of her the more amiable she appears. She is very beautiful and yet no coquetry; she is modest, quite to diffidence, and yet frank and open-hearted. Wherever I have enquired concerning her I have invariably heard the same character of—"remarkably amiable, modest, and of a sweet disposition." When you learn that this is the case I think you will not accuse me of being hasty in bringing the affair to a crisis. I ventured to tell her my whole heart, and instead of obscure and ambiguous answers, which some would have given to tantalize and pain one, she frankly, but modestly and timidly, told me it was mutual. Suffice it to say we are engaged.
If I know my parents I know they will be pleased with this amiable girl. Unless I was confident of it, I should never have been so hasty. I have not yet mentioned it to her parents; she requested me to defer it till next summer, or till I see her again, lest she should be thought hasty. She is but sixteen and is willing to wait two or three years if it is for our mutual interest.
Never, never was a human being so blest as I am, and yet what an ungrateful wretch I have been. Pray for me that I may have a grateful heart, for I deserve nothing but adversity, and yet have the most unbounded prosperity.
The father replies to this characteristic letter on September 4, 1816:—
"I have just received yours of the 2d inst. Its contents were deeply interesting to us, as you will readily suppose. It accounts to us why you have made so long a stay at Concord…. So far as we can judge from your representations (which are all we have to judge from), we cannot refuse you our approbation, and we hope that the course, on which you have entered with your characteristic rapidity and decision, will be pursued and issue in a manner which will conduce to the happiness of all concerned….