Viewing page 237 of 473

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

230

Sunday Oct. 31 1880 It rained all night and was still raining this morning but cleared shortly after breakfast. I went to the cemetery and walked on the common. There were fine solemn skies and rich deep shadows across the distances. I gathered a bouquet of dandelions, daisies, bugloss and the pale yellow snap dragon thinking all the while sadly of dear Gertrude and the many times we walked there together. I combated a melancholy sense of depression and tried to remember her constant injunction not to give into discouragement and sadness. Reading one of my letters to her written from New York after she had been there to see the Taylors off I came across these almost prophetic words.  "Somehow I feel that our life here is about to close and that radical changes are close upon us. I shudder at changes and wish life might go on without them. I did not know then that our life there had at that moment already closed. She never went there again. O if I and she had known it, how should we have borne it. But it was mercifully hidden from us. It would have been unutterable anguish to her.

I had a letter from Mr. Leycester this morning. He had been in Scotland six weeks and just return. His letter was a humid one and he begged me to excuse it. Have written to Alice, to Mary Gifford, to Weir and to Wilmont.

Monday Nov. 1 1880.
All day in my studio working on the little picture for Saras Fair and on Gertrudes portrait for Mrs. Sawyer. Went to the Strand after breakfast and received a nice long letter from Eastman Johnson which I answered this evening. Got some coal for my stove in my studio in case I want to use it. It has been a capricious day of sunshine and clouds and squalls. 

Tuesday 2. The first thing I did this morning was to go to the polls and vote. Maurice and I went together. It has been a perfect day and I fervently hope the Republicans have made a clean sweep of the whole North. I shall be greatly mistaken if they have not. Arrangements have been made to receive returns at Sampson Hall but I did not go down preferring to wait until tomorrow. The two cousins went home by morning train. I went to my studio and painted all day on Gertrudes portrait. I have great trouble with it. I am less depressed than I have been. I hope I shall not fall back again, but presume I shall with the first discouragement. Today was the 26th anniversary of our marriage. I did not think of it, strangely enough until after I went to bed. Thereafter I have been thinking of dear Gertrude all day painting on her portrait and I read two or three of her letters before I went to bed. However I have been thinking of dear Gertrude all day painting on her portrait and I read two or three of her letters before I went to bed.

Transcription Notes:
Unknown word in line 4 of paragraph 1. "bugloss" is a plant name (aka "ox-tongue")