gillette house,

I greet you all with the great accession of love that naturally comes to one w on the feast-day of St Valentine. And you can just rise up & blow your horn, too, & blow it loud—because the subscriber is engaged to be married!—hip, hip, hip – – {now, ALL#together!} On bended knees, in the presence of God only, we devoted our lives to each other & to the service of God. And let this writing be a witness of it, to you.

And so, as soon as I am permanently settled in life, we shall be married. {I don’t sigh, & groan & howl so much, now, as I used to—no, I feel, serene, & arrogant, & stuck-up—& I feel such pity for the world & everybody in it but just us two.) Ⓐemendation I have suddenly grown to be prodigiously important to the world’s welfare, somehow—though it didn’t use to seem to me that my existence was such a very extraordinary matter.

I do wish you knew Miss Livy. She already knows & loves you both—loves you all, I should have said—on my account.

I have received & answered Gen. Hawley’s letter. He suggests that I make my California trip first, & then Warner will be home & we can talk business. I think the General would rather employ me than sell me an interest—but that won’t begin to answer, you know. I can buy into plenty of paying newspapers, but my future wife wants me to be surrounded by a good moral & religious atmosphere (for I shall unite with the church as soon as I am located,) & so she likes the idea of living in Hartford. We could make more money elsewhere, but neither of us are much fired with a mania for money-getting. That is a matter of second-rate, even third-rate Ⓐemendation importance with us.

I shall reach Hartford during the last week of this month, & remain several weeks. I shall spend Saturday & Sunday, Feb. 20th & 21st, in Elmira.

Good-bye & God-bless you.