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town attended the council. Our talks after the business is done are very pleasant as we are a harmonious body.

Tuesday March 1,1881.
A stormy day with snow melting. Mrs. DeForest & Mrs. John Weeks and her daughter called and shortly after Miss DeForest and two other ladies. Mrs. De Forest invited me to drive with them tomorrow. Have painted all day but my picture does not grow much. Went to the club a little while. Mary came home from Rondout.

Wednesday 2. Eastman Johnson came in for a little while and wanted me to come up to see his Academy picture, full length portraits on one large canvas of Renee and Mr. Rutherford. Mr. Conkey called and he took my little picture "A pool in autumn" for $150 paying me $50. If he does not get $250 for it I volunteered to allow them $15 for frame. After he went I went up to Eastmans and saw his picture which is very boldly and rigorously painted and rich in color. Mary is staying there and I went to his room to see her. I could fully enter into his sorrow and we talked of those who were so dear to us and who are gone. Poor man, he does not yet know all the bitterness of his loss. I dined at Mr. DeForests. A Mr. Parsons a lawyer and Centurian was there also. Church came in later and he brought me home in his coupe.

Thursday 3. Weir came and had his landscape sent to Giffords room to paint on it. I went to see it. I could not help telling him that it looked like a foreign picture and that I thought he would be criticized as having been influenced by what is called the "new school". I think the trouble with Weir is that he is beginning to be influenced too much by methods and that his work is not the expression of his impressions of nature. I think to give permanent value to our work we must not lose sight of this controlling motive. I cannot work and am very unsettled and unhappy. I was not well at dinner time and could eat nothing owing to an indigestion from something I ate at lunch. Charlie Ozman came down from Rondout. Dewing went to Washington yesterday on the invitation of a friend to attend the inauguration of President Garfield. I attended a trustees meeting at the Century and after the meeting, Johnson, Weir and his brother and I sat together a while and had a talk, but I am most unhappy mainly I think because my work is unsatisfactory and I cannot do anything to interest me. I think constantly of my dear Gertrude and of all the happy past and the future looks so sad without her that I have no heart to visit it.