I go to Elmira tonight.  I am simply lecturing for societies, at $100 a
pop. 
                         Yrs
                                   Sam.

It would be difficult for any family to refuse relationship with one whose star was so clearly ascending, especially when every inclination was in his favor, and the young lady herself encouraged his suit.  A provisional engagement was presently made, but it was not finally ratified until February of the following year.  Then in a letter from one of his lecture points he tells his people something of his happiness.

To Mrs. Jane Clemens and family, in St. Louis: 

Lockport, N. Y. Feb. 27, 1868.  Dear folks,—­I enclose $20 for Ma.  I thought I was getting ahead of her little assessments of $35 a month, but find I am falling behind with her instead, and have let her go without money.  Well, I did not mean to do it.  But you see when people have been getting ready for months in a quiet way to get married, they are bound to grow stingy, and go to saving up money against that awful day when it is sure to be needed.  I am particularly anxious to place myself in a position where I can carry on my married life in good shape on my own hook, because I have paddled my own canoe so long that I could not be satisfied now to let anybody help me—­and my proposed father-in-law is naturally so liberal that it would be just like him to want to give us a start in life.  But I don’t want it that way.  I can start myself.  I don’t want any help.  I can run this institution without any outside assistance, and I shall have a wife who will stand by me like a soldier through thick and thin, and never complain.  She is only a little body, but she hasn’t her peer in Christendom.  I gave her only a plain gold engagement ring, when fashion imperatively demands a two-hundred dollar diamond one, and told her it was typical of her future lot—­namely, that she would have to flourish on substantials rather than luxuries. (But you see I know the girl—­she don’t care anything about luxuries.) She is a splendid girl.  She spends no money but her usual year’s allowance, and she spends nearly every cent of that on other people.  She will be a good sensible little wife, without any airs about her.  I don’t make intercession for her beforehand and ask you to love her, for there isn’t any use in that—­you couldn’t help it if you were to try.

I warn you that whoever comes within the fatal influence of her beautiful nature is her willing slave for evermore.  I take my affidavit on that statement.  Her father and mother and brother embrace and pet her constantly, precisely as if she were a sweetheart, instead of a blood relation.  She has unlimited power over her father, and yet she never uses it except to make him help people who stand in need of help....

But if I get fairly started on the subject of my bride, I never shall get through—­and so I will quit right here.  I went to Elmira a little over a week ago, and staid four days and then had to go to New York on business.