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.... "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:--