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me. How can it when it seems to interest no one else. Attended a meeting of the Rotary Exhibition at the Century. Only Perry, Bristol, Bierstadt and myself were there. There seems no great interest in it. I dread taking a prominent part in it because I have no money and on account of the great labor and time it will demand. We came to no conclusions but it is gradually assuming shape. Calvert seemed troubled today about something. We are all of us full of perplexities. 

Friday March 23. 1883. The weather remains cold and wintry. I worked on my Indian Summer picture but with poor success. I have no cheerful or restful thoughts. All my communings with my interior self are of anxieties and growing cares. It should not be so with an artist. He ought so to live that material worries should be kept at bay. But who knows how to live wisely? George Sand was appalled at the sum of human distress and who is not who stops to consider it. The daily tragedies in the newspapers, the poverty, the humiliations and the shame, why is it all permitted. "Why is it" she asks. "God alone can tell, He who has made man so slowly progressive and who could have made him so intelligent and more powerful for good than for evil." A Mr. Curtis of the Union League Club called to see me about a picture which the records of the club indicate they bought of me. I explained that it was bought but the art committee having been criticised for it I released them. Calvert and I called at Lockwood De Forests in the evening. 

Saturday 24". Cold still. Walked down the Bowery to see the Brooklyn bridge which approaches completion. They are putting up the connections for the elevated rail now. I am going home to day and shall probably not return until Tuesday night as Sara, who gets very little recreation, wants me to go with her to the Bachelors ball on Monday evening. I feel very little like going to a ball but I also feel it a duty to do something to cheer her dull and laborious life. 

Sunday 25. Went home by 330 train last night. Tom met me. Found my mother about the same. Downing and I took a long walk along under the hill to Steep Rocks, then up the road crossing to the Roastina over which he walked on the ice while I went around. It was a sunny day and the snow was melting rapidly and the river was open a mile above and below the ferry. 

Monday 26. A sad and anxious feeling possesses me. My mother too feels depressed and I try to cheer her which in my own depressed condition it is difficult to do. The Presbyterian minister Mr. Magee whom Sara invited to come and see my 

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