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an hour or two putting the wood in the wood house which was cut from the place this summer when I had the trees trimmed out. Julia, Nannie and Annie Lee who visiting at Johns were here at tea and spent the evening. Old Park was very glad to see me and came into the house and lay on the floor looking at me with the greatest satisfaction. In all my welcome back there is still the vacant place which darling Gertrude filled and which is to know her no more on earth. Her memory grows tenderer and more sacred to me and my sense of her love was never more sharp than it still is. Every thing connected with her grows holier in my eyes and the secret tears and the longing for her never forsake me. Today at the dinner table we were talking about growing old and I could not help giving expression to my dread of growing old with no children to interest themselves in me and no darling Gertrude to follow me into the vale of years. I never used to think much of these things but the sorrows of the past year have turned my thoughts in that direction. In New York I learned that John Weirs brother a Lieutenant in the army had been killed by the Indians while out hunting. John was in New York the day before looking for me and Gifford. I went to his fathers house and saw Julian who told me that John and his brother Charles started for the West the evening before. I wrote to Mrs. Weir from my studio. Today has been a lovely cool bright day but I have been in the house most of the time except this evening when I went down to Johns with Julia. I wrote to Booth, to Pell and Mrs. Wellington and a note to the department of the Interior relative to a pension for Mr Arnold one of my men in Co. H. - Wrote to Janette in the evening.

Monday Oct. 27. 1879. Awoke with a very bad feeling in my head. Moved the Franklin in the parlor and released some of the tiles in the hearth which had become loose. The rest of the day I spent sitting quietly in my chair in front of the fire, reading a part of the time. I read some of Dear Gertrudes letters again which she wrote me the last winter she was here and while I was in New York struggling with anxieties and unhappy at being separated from her as she was at being parted from me. How like her dear self are her letters, the simple and artless expression