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Transcribe page 84 of 151
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Transcription
80 Saturday Aug 23rd 1873. Yesterday we returned from our visit to Nantucket by the day boat. Gertrude was ill there for several days and consequently did not see as much of the Island as I did, still we had a very pleasant visit. Eastman and I went about the town and into many of the old houses which with their sleepy quiet air were very unlike most American houses. In one of them I bought a couple of pieces of old china and we saw a few nice pieces of old furniture, one beautiful old clock which had just been bought by a Boston man for thirty dollars from a house near Eastmans. We left Nantucket at 7.30 and taking the train at [[strikethrough]] Middleton [[/strikethrough]] Woods Hole reached Middleboro about one. Here we had to wait four or five hours for the Fall River train. I got a horse and carriage at the Livery stable and had a man drive us about for two hours. We passed a store a mile or two out of the town which he wanted me to see but it was locked and he could not get the key. He told us it contained an old fashioned stock of goods that had been there for generations. He said there were bonnets as big as a barrel. It belongs to a wealthy family who will not sell these things. It struck me as a queer idea and we regretted very much that we could not get in. We met Lydig Suydam who got on the train at Middleboro for Newport. I was fortunate enough to get a State room in the boat for which I telegraphed the day before from Nantucket. We came up the river in the day boat and the sail was charming. I never saw the river when it was so varied and beautiful. There were fine grey skies and the distances melted into them so beautifully as to make the landscape half unreal and a totally different thing from what it is under its ordinary aspect. Nantucket has been burned up with a drought this summer, here every thing is as green as in June and we might fancy it June, save for that vague indefinable sense of the fading summer one feels now and then in the ripening gardens, the autumn notes of the birds, scurrying about aimlessly and in flocks and the constant chirp of the cricket in the grass.- We went over to John McEntees to tea in the evening. After tea Gertrude sang some old songs - "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" "Then You'll remember me" "Last rose of Summer" &c. Our little house seemed so charming, Gertrudes singing in the old place where she used to sing so much, recalled our early married life and our housekeeping days and made me wish that we were living there again. - I received a letter this evening from Whittredge from Shandaken where he and his wife are staying at Laurents hotel. He is not well and his letter is very sad and shows that he is much depressed. He wants me to come out and see him and I am going this afternoon. I was struck with Whittredges look when I left him in N.Y. and I am anxious about him. He had something of the look which
Notes on Transcribing this page (optional)
In the line after "sense of the fading summer one feels now and then in the ripening gardens," the word that looks like "attend" is actually "autumn". The line after that reads as "scurrying about the grass." I think the word is 'aimlessly'. 'the grass' is actually a line lower than that and goes with the crickets
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