Thank you for your letter (which Ⓐemendation my sister has sent to St Louis. She & Annie are making a visit with us. They ask me to tell you that they very much desire to stop & visit with you again,1explanatory note according to your invitation, & they hope to be able to do it, but they cannot tell as yet, whether they shall have the time. However, for my part I strongly wish that they may tarry with you again, & learn to know you truly as you are, & love you as do all who know you well.

{This is execrable paper, but Livy don’t allow me to use the nice paper. Well I guess she would let me use it to write to you, but every time I write a grocery order under her imposing monogram, I tell you there is trouble in the camp.}

We are glad you printed that graceful account of our wedding & our Surprise—we were glad enough to have you do it, because you know how such things should be done—but I made a special request (for Livy’s sake) of all the other writers present, that at the wedding, that they put all they had to say into one stickfull, & leave out the adjectives.2explanatory note

We are settled down & comfortable, & the days swing by with a whir & a flash, & are gone, we know not where & scarcely care. To me, passing time is a dream, in that it drifts so smoothly—but it is strong & stalwart & convincing reality, in the substantial comfort, & satisfaction & contentment it comes freighted with. There Every day I nerve myself, & sieze Ⓐemendation my pen, & dispose my paper, & prepare to buckle on the harness & work! And then I pace the floor—back & forth, back & forth, with vacuous mind—& finally I lay down the pen & confess that my time is not come—that I am utterly empty. But I must work, & I will work. I will go straight at it & force it. I used to do it every day of my life between Gibraltar & the Bermudas, & of course it can be done again. And it was so hard then! Will it be so now? Worse, maybe.3explanatory note

But there is no romance in this existence for Livy (False) . She embodies the Practical. The Hard, the Practical, the Unsentimental. She is lord of all she surveys.4explanatory note She goes around with her bunch of housekeeper’s kee keys Ⓐemendation (which she don’t know how to unlock anything with them because they are mixed,) & is ob overbearing & perfectly happy. When things don’t go right she breaks the furniture & knocks everything endways. You ought to see her charge around! When I hear her war-whoop Ⓐemendation I know it is time to climb out on the roof. But law me, you know her.

But Livy keeps the cash account straight. She keeps three sets of books & she can tell you just what goes with every fragment of a five-dollar bill, as deftly as if she had been born & bred to housekeeping Ⓐemendation.

But what worries us is our coachman. I went & tricked him out in a livery coat ( w pale blue with a deep cape,) & with enormous brass buttons with a G on them (they had none with a C.) But Ⓐemendation I couldn’t stand those buttons, & had them taken off. And I got him a stove-pipe hat with a broad velvet band & a brass buckle. But I couldn’t stand the buckle. And after all, when we were getting ready for church this morning I felt that I was not equal to the cape,—nor yet to the velvet band. And so I had them both stripped—& it was like stripping a h an exultant peacock of his tail. Afterward I relented, as to the cape, & so we bowled off to church with a coachman who, if liveries desi designated politics, would have been a neutral. But wait a little—wait. I Ⓐemendation can’t take a whole box of pills at one dose, but I cant take a barrel of them give me time. I’ll get along further & further till with this livery business, till by & bye Patrick5explanatory note shall be so gorgeous that the street boys shall follow us hoping thereby to curry favor th with Ⓐemendation the circus we are probably connected with.

We got off to church at last, the ladies no la (no ladies went but the wife of the writer) within & I outside with Patrick.—Patrick with his fearfully tall & fearfully shiny hat. Do you know, that coat of Patrick’s cost me more than did any that ever I wore?—& it is so handsome. It did not seem to me that a man’s coachman ought to wear a finer coat than himself, & so, under way, I swapped coats with Patrick, and—

Dr Heacock is an exceedingly pleasant & hearty man. He After church he trotted us out before his Sunday School & gave us a chance to show our trousseaux. I can never forget him. I never can forget his kindness to the stranger within his gates.6explanatory note Some ministers—most ministers, perhaps—would have allowed us to come, & go, with chilly unrecognition, & with no thought as to whether we wished to show our clothes—with no—7explanatory note

I feel that we shall get along well here in Buffalo, & with its people, & that we shall be happy & content. I know that in your heart you hope this for us. And we two will get along well together.—I feel it, I know it. We have been married eleven days, & not thirty-five (not one) cross words have passed between us. It is a blessed union—a union of hearts as well as hands. I never saw such a couple as we are in all my life.

Your blessing Mother!