Hip—hip—Hurrah! She just goes on “accepting the situation” in the most natural innocent, easy-going way in the world. She writes as if the whole thing were perfectly understood, & would no doubt be unpleasantly astonished to find if she only knew I had been regarding it differently & had been ass enough to worry about a cousin whom she merely gives the passing mention accorded to the humblest guests.1explanatory note She don’t know anything about beating the devil around the bush2explanatory note—she has never been used to it. She simply calls things by their right names & goes straight at the appalling subject of matrimony with the most amazing effrontery. I am in honor bound to regard her grave, philosophical dissertations as love letters, because they probe the very marrow of that passion, but there isn’t a bit of romance in them, no poetical repining, no endearments, no adjectives, no flowers of speech, no nonsense, no bosh. Nothing but solid chunks of wisdom, my boy—love letters gotten up in onⒶemendation the square, flat-footedⒶemendation, cast-iron, inexorable plan of the most approved commercial correspondence, & signed with stately & exasperating decorum. “Lovingly, Livy L. Langdon”—in full, by the Ghost of Caesar! They are more precious to me than whole reams of affectionate superlatives would be, coming from any other woman, but they are the darlingest funniest love letters that ever were written, I do suppose. She gets her stateliness of English epistolary composition from her native dignity, & she gets that from her mother, who was born for a countess.

Hip—hip—Hurrah! I have badgered them & persecuted them until they have yielded, & I am to stop there for one day & night, on Dec. 17!

I am full of gratitude to God this day, & my prayers will be sincere. Now write me a letter which I can read to her, & letⒶemendation it reach Elmira a day or so before I get there—enclose it in an envelop directed to “Chas. J. Langdon, Elmira, N.Y.”3explanatory note Good-bye. My love to you all.