I was just delighted with your letter received to-day. We forgot the extract, but I have just written to Mrs. Fairbanks, & she will send it to me to be prepared for publication. Your Ⓐemendation letter was so natural, Livy, & so like yourself. I Ⓐemendation do wish I could see you! I scold you as bitterly as I can for daring to sit up & write after midnight.1explanatory note Now you have it, at last. And I forgive you & bless you in the same moment! {Oh, you are so present to me at this moment, Livy, that it seems absurd to be writing to you when I almost seem to touch your forehead with my lips.} on thinner paper: I thank you with all my heart for your warm New Year wishes—& you know that you have mine. I naturally thought of you all the day long, that day—as I do every day—& a dozen times I recalled our New Year at Mr. Berry’s. I remembered it perfectly well, & spoke of it to Mrs. Fairbanks—& the Moorish architecture, too. And I remembered perfectly well that I didn’t rightly know where the charm was, that night, until you were gone. And I did have such a struggle, the first day I saw you at the St Nicholas, to keep from loving you with all my heart!2explanatory note But you seemed to my bewildered vision, a visiting Spirit from the upper air—a something to worship, reverently & at a distance—& not a creature of common human clay, to be profaned by the love of such as I. Maybe it was a little extravagant, Livy, but I am honestly setting down my thought, just as it flitted through my brain. Now you can understand why I offend so much with praises—for to me you are still so far above all created things that I cannot speak of you in tame commonplace language—I must reserve that for tame, commonplace Ⓐemendation people. Don’t scold me, Livy—let me pay my due homage to your worth; let me honor you above all women; let me love you with a love that knows no doubt, no question—for you are my world, my life, my pride, my all of earth that is worth the having. Develop your faults, if you have them—they have no terrors for me—nothing shall tear you out of my heart. Livy, if you only knew how much I love you! But I couldn’t make you comprehend it, though I wrote a year. God keep you from suffering & sorrow always, my honored Livy!—& spare you to me till many & many a peaceful New Year shall wax & wane & crown & re-crown us with their blessings.

My heart warms to good old Charlie,3explanatory note whenever I think of him—& more than ever when he crosses my plane of vision, now, doing thoughtful kindnesses for you. He loves you, Livy, as very, very few brothers love their sisters. And you deserve it, you dear good girl, if ever sister did in the world.

“People” made you cross? I wonder what they did. Come to the deserted confessional, Livy—what was it?

Ah, I thought I was going to get a dreadful scolding!—I began to wish I had risen earlier, latterly—I was commencing to feel twinges of guilt s tugging at my heart—but I turned the page & presto! you wre were a brave defender of the worn & weary instead! You were my Champion, as it were, & not my censurer. And your mother took the same view of the case—& Mr Beecher also, in his miscellany.4explanatory note I felt ever so much better. And I did love your generous indignation against that outrage, Livy! And well I might—for several times, lately, when I have gone to bed completely tired out, I have fallen asleep fancying that I would sleep late, & breakfast with you alone—a thing so pleasant to think about—& behold, here was tacit permission for some future day when I may come to you wearied out with these wanderings, & longing for rest. But a plague take that fellow, for an idiot!—to put off his marriage for so silly a thing—to put it off at all, even for a day, if she is ready & he has his home prepared. What Ⓐemendation can compensate him for three long years of happiness spurned?—a “splurge?” Verily it is a funny world, Livy Ⓐemendation, even as you say.5explanatory note Make some more pictures of our own wedded happiness, Livy—with the bay window (which you shall have,) & the grate in the living-room—(which you shall have, likewise,) & flowers, & pictures & books (which we will read together,)—pictures of our future home—a home whose patron saint shall Ⓐemendation be Love—a home with a tranquil “home atmosphere” about it Ⓐemendation—such an o home as “our hearts & our God shall approve.” And Livy, don’t say at the bottom of it, “How absurd, perhaps wrong, I am to write of these things which are so uncertain.” Don’t, Livy, it spoils everything—& sounds so chilly. Let us think these things, & believe them—it is no wrong—let us believe that God has destined us for each other, & be happy in the belief—it will be time enough to doubt it when His hand shall separate us, if it ever does—a calamity, I humbly & beseechingly pray h He Ⓐemendation will spare us in His great mercy. Let us hope & believe that we shall walk hand in hand down the lengthening highway Ⓐemendation of life, one in heart, one in impulse & one in love & worship of Him—bearing each other’s burdens, sharing each other’s joys, soothing each other’s griefs—&, so linked together, & so journeying, pass at last the shadowed boundaries of lif Time & stand redeemed & saved, beyond the threshold & within the light that beams of that Land whose Prince is the Lord of rest eternal. Picture it, Livy—cherish it, think of it. It is no wrong—we are privileged to do it by the blameless love we bear each other. God will bless you in it—will be beless Ⓐemendationus both, I fervently believe.

When I get starved & find that I have a little wife that knows nothing about cooking, and—Oh, my prophetic soul!6explanatory note you know anything about cookery! I would as soon think of your knowing the science of sawing wood! We shall have some peculiarly & particularly awful dinners, I make no manner of doubt, but I guess we can eat them, & other people who don’t like them need not favor us with their company. That is a fair & proper way to look at it, I think.

You are such a darling faithful little correspondent, Livy. I can depend on you all the time, & I do enjoy your letters so much. And every time I come to the last page & find a blank area on it I want to take you in my arms & kiss you & wheedle you into sitting down & filling it up—& right away my conscience pricks me for wanting to make you go to work again when you have already patiently & faithfully wrought more than I deserve, & until your hands is cramped & tired, no doubt, & your body weary of its one position.

I bless you for your religious counsel, Livy—& more & more every day, for every with every passing day I understand it better & appreciate it more. I am “dark” yet—I see I am still depending on my own strength to lift myself up, & upon my own sense of what is right to guide me in the Way—but not always, Livy, not always. I see the Savior dimly at times, & at intervals very near—would that the intervals were not so sad a length apart! Sometimes it is a Pleasure to me to pray, night & morning, in cars & everywhere, twenty times a day—& then again the whole spirit of religion is motionless (not dead) within me from the rising clear to the setting of the sun. I can only say, Be of good heart, my Livy—I am slow to move, & I bear upon my head the a deadly weight of sin—a weight such as you cannot comprehend—thirty-three years of ill-doing & wrongful speech—but I have hope—hope—hope. It will all be well. Dare I to say it? Ⓐemendation—to say—& why not, since it is the truth? Only this: I fear I would distrust a religious faith that came upon me suddenly—that came upon me otherwise than deliberately, & proven, step by step as it came. You will blame me for this, Livy—but be lenient with me, for you know I grope blindly as yet.7explanatory note

I am all impatience to see the se picture—& I do hope it will be a good one, this time. I want it to be more than a painted iron plate8explanatory note—I want it to be yourself—your own dainty self, Livy—I want the eyes to tell me what is passing in the heart, & the hair & the vesture Ⓐemendation & the attitude to bring to me the vivid presentment of the grace that now is only vaguely glimpsed to me in dreams of you at night when I & the world sleep.

I shudder to think what time it may be! All the sounds are such late sounds! But though you were here to scold me, darling, I would not put this pen down till I had written I LOVE you, Livy!