One very important result of his return to social life was found in his marriage, in 1820, to Miss Susan Amory, the daughter of Mr. Thomas C. Amory, a leading merchant of Boston.[6] The bride was a very charming girl, to whom her young husband was passionately devoted, and who filled his life with a radiant happiness which delighted all who knew and loved him. His naturally buoyant spirits rose to exuberance after his engagement. He forgot his affliction. He let his reading go by the board. He was, in fact, too happy for anything but happiness, and this delight even inspired him to make a pun that is worth recording. Prescott was an inveterate punster, and his puns were almost invariably bad; but when his bachelor friends reproached him for his desertion of them, he laughed and answered them with the Vergilian line,-- "_Omnia vincit amor et nos cedamus Amori_"-- a play upon words which Thackeray independently chanced upon many years later in writing _Pendennis_, and _à propos_ of a very different Miss Amory. It is of interest to recall the description given by Mr. Ticknor of Prescott as he appeared at the time of his marriage (May 4, 1820) and, indeed, very much as he remained down to the hour of his death. "My friend was one of the finest looking men I have ever seen; or, if this should be deemed in some respects a strong expression, I shall be fully justified ... in saying that he was one of the most attractive. He was tall, well formed, manly in his bearing but gentle, with light brown hair that was hardly changed or diminished by years, with a clear complexion and a ruddy flash on his cheek that kept for him to the last an appearance of comparative youth, but above all with a smile that was the most absolutely contagious I ever looked on.... Even in the last months of his life when he was in some other respects not a little changed, he appeared at least ten years younger than he really was. And as for the gracious sunny smile that seemed to grow sweeter as he grew older, it was not entirely obliterated even by the touch of death."