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to Shokan where we engaged board at the hotel where we were very comfortable and remained until yesterday 23"  I made in all about twenty sketches all done at a sitting. The autumn was not very brilliant except for a short time when the reds faded out and yellow prevailed. The weather was very cold and part of the time with snow on the mountains but yesterday and the day before were fine warm Indian Summer days. It looked more beautiful when we came away than at any time before but it was Saturday, and there were indications of a change of weather. Joe Tubby came out and spent ten days. We all left together Whittredge going to New Hampshire to visit a friend. Today there is a thick Indian Summer atmosphere with clouds and indications of rain. The leaves are falling rapidly. I hope these three weeks devoted entirely to sketching will further my ideas and give me some new thoughts for my pictures. The memory of nature is generally more available to me than the actual sketches. I shall go to New York soon as there is important work to be done in connection with the Academy and the Centennial and some one will have to develope qualities of wisdom and executive ability to bring us out of this, as I regard it, most critical era in American Art. The Chicago exhibition from which I hoped something has passed by with no results that I have heard of and I doubt if any thing has been sold. On the whole the outlook is not encouraging. The Artists are poor and divided in their councils. [[?]] the teacher of drawing at the Academy has continued with the students and established a "League" whose prospectus breathes an unconcealed hostility to the Academy because we do not go on incurring debt to educate these ungrateful students. I think that terms are decidedly critical and I feel our inability to do anything unless some enthusiasm and unity of action should be developed. Wrote a long letter to Eastman Johnson in the forenoon mostly on Academy and Centennial affairs and begging him to come to town earlier this year. In the afternoon Gertrude and I took a ride back of Steep Rocks to get some ferns.

Tuesday Oct. 26. 1875. Spent Monday forenoon making a box for the ferns we gathered Sunday in the afternoon Gertude and my father and I went to Steep Rocks where I got Stills boat and rowed them up the river as far as the large ice house. When we got home found here Dr Hase a Methodist clergyman from Newburgh came to attend a temperance convention. He proved to be a very genial pleasant man. Today Mr Bales and Mr. McLean also dined with us. We are having a Thunder Storm this evening. The leaves are mostly fallen from the trees in front of the house. Edwin Booth appeared in Hamlet last night and had a most enthusiastic reception. I had a postal card from him asking me 

Transcription Notes:
Joseph Tubby, artist