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question of the removal of the club to 38" St was to be discussed. A very full meeting of about 300 lasting until 11 oclock when a ballot was taken and the measure was defeated by three or four votes. Just as it was with a smaller attendance a month ago. I think this puts the subject of removal at rest for some time. I dined with Eastman Johnson and we went down to the meeting together. It was snowing when I came to my room. 

Sunday Feb. 4. Came to my room a little while. Beard came in. He is at work on a design for a great monument to Garfield at Cleveland and placing all his hopes on its being accepted. I am afraid he will be disappointed. He has not the proper conception for monumental design to my mind although his ideas are not commonplace. They are rather inclined to be somewhat bizarre & grotesque. After dinner at 2 Calvert and I went to the club to smoke a cigar. Thompson, Reiniger & McDonough were there. Thompson who had evidently been drinking criticized McDonough and the board of management for certain expressions in their report on removal and he grew offensive. Then he pitched into me and charged me with blackballing Wm. Astor several years ago when he was a candidate for the Century and said he would not forgive me for it. McDonough told him to be silent; that he had tried to quarrel with him and now was trying to quarrel with me and that the club would not submit to such conduct. He did not reply; but to me it was a most humiliating spectacle and showed me how lost Thompson was to shame through this unfortunate habit. I called on Mrs Gray in the evening. Her mother and Sister Emma were there and Harry. They seemed to me to be worried in the same way I am. I could not help the impression that life was a struggle just as it is to almost all artists. It was very cold when I came to my room. It snowed a couple of inches in the middle of the day. 

Monday 5". Painted on my picture and improved it, but I work without stimulus or enthusiasm. It is so every spring until I have come to dread the return of that season almost every one hails with delight. I remember the agonies and anxieties that must reach clear across the summer. I used to look to the winter to repair my poor fortunes. Last winter I sold comparatively nothing in N.Y. and this winter it has been the same. I have not sold a single picture in this great city this winter. I sold one small one from the Brooklyn Exhibition, so that even my expectations are failing me. How tenderly I think of dear Gertrude in these dark days. The same anxieties ran all through our married life and I remember so well how in my despondency she would look at me with all the sadness her sweet sunny sympathetic face was capable of assuming. She is as real

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-03-25 16:29:48