Viewing page 201 of 473

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

200

Mr. Staples on the way who has been sick with consumption many years and who seems to me near his end now. Read a letter from Mr. Bachelder. He does not intend to go to Seconnet until the last of August. I will like this all the better if I can only employ myself until then. A letter from Downing telling me he got home all right about 2 oclock this morning and today delivered my ms. at Scribners. Maurice is still away. Have not seen him since Monday. I wrote to Mrs. Weir this morning, whose sister Mrs. Grable died at their house in New Haven on the 24" as I saw by the Tribune yesterday.

Thursday July 29. 1880.
Worked a little while this morning cleaning up the little room over the carriage house which Marion disorganized somewhat in her search for some of her things and then went to my studio and painted until noon. It has been another cool day with a charming color in the landscape and fine rich clouds with the view from the N. After dinner I had the horses hitched up and my mother Mrs. Davis, Jamie, Charlie and Charlie Smith took a ride out on the Flat-bush road crossing over to the Saugerties road this side the church. One of the axles got hot and twisted the box in the wheel. I was obliged to stop at Clares and have it taken off and I fear it has ruined the wheel. A letter from Bowyer saying Calvert would come by the Powell tomorrow night and he thought he would come on Saturday. I have been reading some of my letters to dear Gertrude. It is a great comfort to me that they all breathe my love and my earnest desire for her happiness. Dear, darling Gertrude, I think of her every hour in the day and am no more accustomed to being without her than the day she left me. It is so lonely and sad without her. I have a constant sense of missing something which made life lovely and worth living.

Friday 30 Another cool delightful day with fine skies. Went to Rondout to get the wheel fixed. Found it not so serious as I thought. Commenced an autumn picture this forenoon from one of my Shokan studies with a sky something like we have been having for a couple of days. A telegram from Calvert saying he cannot come up this week. Maurice has been gone ever since Monday afternoon and we do not know where he is. I have been reading some of dear Gertrudes letters in 1875. He was in a dreadful condition and she was taking care of him. I wonder if he ever thinks of how much she did for him. While I read her letters I seem to be with her. I wish I could dream of her. I never have except but for a moment. It would be so sweet to dream of seeing her.