15 February 1869, Ohio

Livy, darling, how are you this morning? For it is morning, I guess, in as much as it is only half past 9, I have not got up yet. I only awoke a little while ago, naturally thought of you the first thing. I don't intend to get up till noon.

I wrote to our Mother,-- if she will allow me to call her so -- the letter is gone. If I had it back I would write it over again. I see that inletting the letter "write itself" it took entirely too unconventional a form. I forgot, occasionally, the fact that I was really writing to the PUBLIC, instead of to her. And so I elaborated what needed no elaboration, merely touched upon matters which should have been treated more fully. But don't you see?-- if I had kept the public in my mind, the sense of being questioned cross questioned by outsiders, upon matters essentially private and personal, would have been so oppressive that I could not have written at all. It is hard to know that what you are writing (confessing) about your most delicate and private affairs is to be read by strangers and unlovingly criticized commented on at tea tables among miscellaneous groups who would often rather say a smart thing than a kind one. So I think that maybe, after all, there may have been a little natural impulse to holdback, instead of speaking out freely, though I was not really conscious of such an impulse. I do not think I am more sensitive than others would be under like circumstances.

I wrote Twichell a short note yesterday to thank him for his kind efforts in forwarding our affairs. I told him we meant to lead a useful, unostentatious and earnest religious life, and that I should unite with the church as soon as I was settled, and that both of us, on these accounts, would prefer the quiet, moral atmosphere of Hartford to the driving, ambitious ways of Cleveland. I wanted him to understand that what we want is a home -- we are done with the shows and vanities of life and are ready to enter upon its realities that we are tired of chasing its phantoms and shadows, and are ready to grasp its substance. At least I am -- and "I" means both of us, and "both of us" means I of course -- for are not we Twain one flesh?

I told Mrs. Fairbanks to have the ring made, and then express it to me at Elmira so that it would reach there about the 20th. And so you see I can put it on your finger myself, my precious little wife.

I read a great deal in the Testament last night -- why didn't we read the Testament more, instead of carrying loads of books into the drawing room which we never read? I thought of it Several times.

Sam

Clouding up again -- well, is it never going to clear off? I will go to sleep again. Take this loving kiss and go to bed yourself, my idol.