I found Lucretia in good health, very glad to see me.  She improves on acquaintance; she is, indeed, a most amiable, affectionate girl; I know you will love her.  She has consented that I should inform her parents of our attachment.  I have, accordingly, just sent a letter to her father (twelve o’clock), and am now in a state of suspense anxiously waiting his answer.  Before I close this, I hope to give you the result.

Five o’clock. I have just called and had a conversation (by request) with Mr. Walker, and I have the satisfaction to say:  “I have Lucretia’s parents’ entire approbation.”  Everything successful!  Praise be to the giver of every good gift!  What, indeed, shall I render to Him for all his unmerited and continually increasing mercies and blessings?

In a letter to Miss Walker from a girl friend we find the following:—­

“You appear to think, dear Lucretia, that I am possessed of quite an insensible heart; pardon me if I say the same of you, for I have heard that several have become candidates for your affections, but that you remained unmoved until Mr. M., of Charlestown, made his appearance, when, I understand, you did hope that his sentiments in your favor were reciprocal.

“I rejoice to hear this, for, though I am unacquainted with that gentleman, yet, when I heard he was likely to become a successful suitor, I have made some enquiries concerning him, and find he is possessed of every excellent and amiable quality that I should wish the person to have who was to become the husband of so dear a friend as yourself.”

Morse must have returned home about the end of October, for we find no more letters until the 14th of December, when he writes from Portsmouth, New Hampshire:—­

“I should have written you sooner but I have been employed in settling myself.  I thought it best not to be precipitate in fixing on a place to board and lodge, but first to sound the public as to my success.  Every one thinks I shall meet with encouragement, and, on the strength of this, I have taken lodgings and a room at Mrs. Hinge’s in Jaffrey Street; a very excellent and central situation....  I shall commence on Monday morning with Governor Langdon’s portrait.  He is very kind and attentive to me, as, indeed, are all here, and will do everything to aid me.  I wish not to raise high expectations, but I think I shall succeed tolerably well.”

About this time Finley Morse and his brother Edwards had jointly devised and patented a new “flexible piston-pump,” from which they hoped great things.  Edwards, always more or less of a wag, proposed to call it “Morse’s Patent Metallic Double-headed Ocean-Drinker and Deluge-Spouter Valve Pump-Boxes.”

It was to be used in connection with fire-engines, and seems really to have been an excellent invention, for President Jeremiah Day, of Yale College, gave the young inventors his written endorsement, and Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, thus recommends it:  “Having examined the model of a fire-engine invented by Mr. Morse, with pistons of a new construction, I am of opinion that an engine may be made on that principle (being more simple and much less expensive), which would have a preference to those in common use.”