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Thursday Feb. 15" 1883. Dark rainy weather with devastating floods in the Ohio Valley. I work away producing pictures and so keep measurably cheerful not allowing myself often to think of the future. When I do I am greatly troubled. Spent the evening at Marys and called on Julia Dillon.

Friday 16. Still rainy. Worked on my picture (20 x 24) back of Steep Rocks looking over the river, which promises well. Calvert came over for a while and looked over my sketches He is very encouraging and helpful. We went through the rain to Chickering Hall to hear Chas. Elliot Norton on the work of the Archaeological Institute at Assos in Greece. It seemed to be about everything but Assos and in that way was disappointing to me. 
 
Saturday 17. Geo. B. Wood of Philadelphia called. I somehow had got an idea, perhaps from no particular reason, that he was rather a struggling artist. He showed me a collection of photographs to which art he is devoting a good deal of attention just now. Among them was one of a large ancestral looking stone house with ample grounds which he said was his. Certainly one would have to be well to do to live in such a place. I went home by the 3.30 train. There was a good deal of water on the ice, otherwise the crossing was perfectly good. Found my mother about the same. It grew colder in the night and froze. 

Sunday 18. Colder and everything covered with ice. I took a walk out to the view and came home through the cemetery past my dear Gertrudes grave, "where all of her that time can wither, sleeps."  Sometimes I wonder if it would not be better to try to forget this spot, where I know she is not, but how impossible. I read in Fanny Kembles Recollections of a Girlhood, a charming book to me. She has what to me was so charming in dear Gertrude, a great admiration for lovely women and she has the happy faculty of presenting them to her readers as she saw them in all their attractiveness. I cam reading three interesting books just now. "Histoire de ma vie" of George Sand, Founders History of England & Fanny Kembles book. What a new and wide world of interest books open to us. Dear Gertrude used to say "I can always lose myself in a book" Gussie and I read Fanny Kemble aloud to my mother who enjoys it greatly. 

Monday 19. Went down town and had my hair cut. After dinner Gussie, Sara, Mary with her two children Girard & Charlie and I took a sleigh ride. A bright & sunny day.