It is noon, & snowing. I am here, the guest of Judge Mason—& happy. Mrs. Mason is g so good, & so kind, so thoughtful, so untiring in her genuine hospitality, & lets me be just as troublesome as I want to, that I just love her, & it seems as if she were you—or your double. She lets me smoke in the house, & bring in snow on my boots, & sleep late, & eat at unseasonable hours, & leaves my valise wide open & un on the floor & my soiled linen scattered about it just exactly as I leave it & as it ought to be to make life truly happy. I tell you I like that. It is being at home, you know. They are going to let me stay till Monday. And I shall enjoy every moment of the time. Don’t you wish you were here? But we have two pleasant young ladies, & so we don’t need you & haven’t got any use for you, mother mine.1explanatory note

And I have pestered Mrs. Langdon through Livy, till she has surrendered & says I may call on the 17th & stay one day & night. Hip—hip—hurrah! Livy is growing stronger & better. I She will soon be a perfect Hercules in a small way. Last Monday she walked up to the Spauldings & back, in a driving snow-storm. What do you think of that? If she embarks in any more desperate enterprises like that, there is going to be war in our family.2explanatory note I don’t want to lose her now. Don’t you be worried about us (though your awful croak about looking from Pisgah upon the Promised Land yet failing at last to enter it3explanatory note was, Ⓐemendationperfectly reasonable & made me feel properly uncomfortable.) She isn’t demonstrative, a bit, (who ever supposed she would be?) but she sticks like a good girl, & answers every letter just as soon as she has read it—& lectures me like smoke, too. But I like it. And I never do or think or say anything now that isn’t right, (except being slow about answering the letters of good indulgent mothers,) & so if I am not to be a Christian at last, it will take many & many a month of discouragement to prove it to me.

I am to lecture in Fort Plain, N. Y., on the 19th, & in Detroit the 22d. I wonder if I dare to stop in Cleveland an hour or two. Have to go down town. Good-bye.