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when I came home and it has all its appearance of a great storm. I had one of the dearest and sweetest of letters from Sara. This morning and I could not sleep until I wrote to tell her so. It was all about Gertrude and recalled her pretty ways and her love for me as shown in her daily life with them there at home. I went out in the storm to post it so that she will get it tomorrow. Steadman gave me a copy of his Victorian Poets. I wrote Laura a congratulatory note.
 
Thursday Jan. 16. 1879. Still snowing violently when I got up and started out to go to breakfast. I had to wade all the way over there in the snow and it was very cold. After breakfast I stopped at the dentists and returned to my room where I have been all day trying to paint some thing but I fear to no purpose something that cannot be painted. Palmer came in. He seemed hard and cold to me, but perhaps he did not mean to be, and before he went he seemed to have grown a little more tender. Still I could not help thinking he would not have come if I had not met him last night. I have been sad and depressed today. Perhaps it was the storm although I always feel quiet and happy on stormy days.

Friday 17. Went down town to see about the brackets of our curtain rods and Col. Laurence about my beaver skins which I told him to sell for not less than four dollars each. Have tried to paint but do not seem able to concentrate my thought. It wanders off to Gertrude and to - every where but where I would hold it. Calvert came in. Had a note from Eastman saying he would go home with me tomorrow and asking me to dine with him, which I did, meeting him in the car in the elevated road.
 
Monday 20. Eastman and I went to Rondout on Saturday by the 8 A.M. train. My father drove our car on the ice and met us at Rhinebeck. It was a fine winter day growing colder in the afternoon. After dinner we drove down to the lower ice house expecting