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73 

Saturday May 31. 1879. Mr. Butterfield came in this morning and bought my "October Snow" for six hundred dollars for a wedding present to Mr. Boardman. I sent it up to Wilmonts to have the frame put in order and he is to send it to Mrs. Yvelins residence. John and Lucy went here by the four O'Clock train and my Mother, Jamie, Sedgwick and I by the Powell. It was a very hot day and the sail up the river was delightful.        

Sunday June 1. 1879
A very hot day. I wrote to Mrs. Sawyer and also to my father who is to be in Perry on Monday. After tea Lucy and I went over to the cemetery and set out some fragrant violets on Gertrudes grave and cut the grass about it. How much I thought of her today and how I longed for her as I sat alone in my room at home where she was a year ago. I wrote to Mrs. Sawyer that I hoped I was beginning to get a little accustomed to her absence except when I saw something of hers something closely connected with her, and then it all comes back to me with a sharpness that does not lessen. I was feeling very sad, looking out of the window on the summer landscape, thinking how she used to enjoy it when I was there and Sara came in weeping. I suppose she heard my sighs for she too was thinking of dear Gertrude. I read some of my letters to her last year, but sometimes I think it would be better for me not to go to my past, to resist it all I can and yet I cannot bear to turn away from any thought of her. 

Monday 2. Came down in the Powell Sara bringing Jansen and me down to the boat. It has been a hot day but the sail down was cool and refreshing. A card from Weir inviting me to come up on Thursday. Attending the wedding of Mr. Boardman and Mrs. Yvelin. It was suffocatingly hot. The bride is an enormously stout woman but she looked very nicely. McKibbin and his wife were there, all the Boardman girls and Ed. Alice took me up to see the presents. My picture was there, a present from Mr & Mrs. Butterfield and I think was the most valuable of all the presents. Certainly I would rather have had it than anything else I saw. I came away early and came to Marys for a while and then to my room. It rained and I was damp and hot. Found a nice letter from Lily French and wrote her a letter. She had got her fan and was greatly pleased with it. Gifford was in today and said he would go to New Haven on Thursday so I wrote to Weir.