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394

Sunday Nov. 12" 1882. 
This has been one of the longing days in which having no special interest for the day, I have been thrown back into the past and have felt myself giving way to a light melancholy and a sense of longing for something, I hardly know what; perhaps of companionship, or work to occupy this attention, for I have not been able to read. I walked over to this cemetery directly after breakfast. The morning was gray but mild. A few flowers were still fully blooming on my dear Gertrudes grave but most of them had been withered by the frost. I have had many a tender thought of her today and many a heart sick longing for her dear presence for all things have recalled her vividly. Sara and I arranged some of the ferns I got the other day in vases and their sweet odor recalled her and the Kaatskill days and so much that has ended. Before I returned from my walk I went out to the "View" and saw the beginning of the staging for the great bridge. Coming back I gathered a dozen Dandelion blooms, the very first and the last flowers of the season. Then I wrote to Booth from whom I got a letter yesterday. Maurice went to work on the Courier again this evening. My father is not well and seems to offer no resistance to his indisposition. I cut from the Tribune an article from the London Spectator called "Art and Life" which expresses much of what I have felt concerning our modern art its skill and its unworthy aims. Many of the artists are men I cannot feel drawn to and in going back to New York I do not look forward as I once did, with pleasure to the civility of my artist friends, with a few exceptions. It makes me sad to feel myself gradually withdrawing from artists, but I am not in sympathy with many of them and they displease me. It is better to be alone than to be with them. 

Monday 13. Went to N.Y. by the noon train to attend the dinner given by Whitelaw Reid to Hubert Herkomer the English artist. There was an accident on the road at Peekskill to a fast up train by which one man was seriously if not fatally hurt and by which our train was delayed so we did not reach town until nearly 6 oclock and I had all I could do to reach Reids by seven which I did by taking a carriage. The dinner was very pleasant and the guests distinguished. They were Ex Secretary Blaine, Mr. Astor, Mr. Scribner, J. Q. A. Ward, Hazard, Holt, Wm. Walter Phelps, Bierstadt, Julian Hawthorne, Prof. Marsh, Burlingame, Herkomer & myself. Mrs. Reid dined with us. I had some talk with Herkomer after dinner who impressed me as a striving enterprising man who is evidently impressed with his ability