"We think her parents should be made acquainted with the state of the business, as she is so young and the thing so important to them."
The son answers this letter, from Walpole, New Hampshire, on September 7, 1816, thus naively: "You think the parents of the young lady should be made acquainted with the state of the business. I feel some degree of awkwardness as it respects that part of the affair; I don't know the manner in which it ought to be done. I wish you would have the goodness to write me immediately (at Walpole, to care of Thomas Bellows, Esq.) and inform me what I should say. Might I communicate the information by writing?"
Here he gives a detailed account of the family, and, for the first time, mentions the young lady's name—Lucretia Pickering Walker—and continues:—
"You ask how the family have treated me. They are all aware of the attachment 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?