December 12 Thursday – Sam wrote from Washington to Mary Mason Fairbanks. About Mary’s advice to get married, Sam gave the famous reply:

“I want a good wife—I want a couple of them if they are particularly good….But seriously again, if I were settled I would quit all nonsense & swindle some girl into marrying me. But I wouldn’t expect to be ‘worthy’ of her. I wouldn’t have a girl that I was worthy of. She wouldn’t do. She wouldn’t be respectable enough” [MTL 2: 133-4].