October 18 Sunday – Sam wrote from Hartford to Livy. He engaged in name-dropping with Rev. Joseph H. Twichell, whom he met a week before. Sam had determined to live up to the standards of the Langdons in order to win Livy. He cheerfully accepted being “rebuked” by Livy, in much the same spirit he’d always done with his mother and also with Mary Fairbanks. It wasn’t entirely a game with Sam, however much he enjoyed the cycle. Sam sincerely wanted to improve himself, and to follow Anson Burlingame’s dictum to associate with more elevated persons. Knowing and extolling Twichell, a neighbor to Elisha Bliss and pastor of the Asylum Hill Congregational Church in Hartford, worked to Sam’s benefit. Twichell became a life-long friend and confidant, and would officiate along with Thomas K. Beecher (1824-1900) at Sam’s wedding.

This man apologized to me for talking so much about religion. He would not have done me that wrong if he had known how much I respected him for it & how beautiful his strong love for his subject made his words seem. When religion, coming from your lips & his, shall be distasteful to me, I shall be a lost man indeed….He & his wife are to drive me about the country tomorrow afternoon, & I am to sup with them & spend the evening, which is to last till midnight. He is about my age—likes my favorite author, too… [MTL 2: 266-9].