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at the Junction for us. I talked with Mr. Wilber about buying a tract of land for half a mile along the brook above our camp and if possible I mean to secure it for a more lovely place and one more rich in picturesque material with the advantages of being so accessible and so easily supplied it would be difficult to find. We had beautiful weather most of the time, a few cold nights but we kept warm. Altogether it was the most satisfactory thing of the kind I ever undertook, and to my surprise the cooking and necessary work did not prove so irksome as I feared it would. Today we have been sunning and drying our tents and camp furniture. Eastman went to N.Y. on his way back to Nantucket by the 11 50. W.S. train to our request as we hoped he would stay over Sunday. It rained again in the afternoon. Calvert came up by the 3 oclock train W.S. The autumnal color is coming on very finely and promises to be most brilliant.

Girards wife presented him with a boy on friday. 12" his fourth one.
 
Sunday Oct 14" 1883 (1878) Five years* ago tonight my dear Gertrude died. It has been almost such a day, one of the loveliest October days. I went over to the cemetery after breakfast. A few flowers were still blooming on her grave. On poor Morries grave the morning=glories which I transplanted in June after he died, had ripened their seed and the vines lay brown and withered on the little trellis above his grave. Both these members of our household gone forever, each of them so closely a part of us yet in so widely different ways; how sad and strange it seemed that though still a part of us they carry theirs in eternal silence unmindful of all our tenderness. Dear Gertrude. I am learning to live without her presence but not without daily communion with her sweet spirit. Her absence is becoming a part of my life as her companionship was and I thank Heaven for the sweet legacy of her matchless and beautiful character and her love that the grave cannot hide from me. I have feet less sharp sorrow on this anniversary of her death than ever before and can think of her now without tears and without that despair that sought her everywhere, while all things connected with her grow more sacred and all my memories of her more tender and more full of a sweet satisfaction, gradually fitting me better to live the remnant of my days alone. I feel cheerful and hopeful as she always wished me to and always tried to make me feel and I rest in the sweet expectancy that this separation is but temporary; that we shall meet again and for eternity. 

Wrote to Alice, to Mr. Conkey, Ferdinand Jury, Miss McCoy, and Mr. C. M. Kurtz 

Transcription Notes:
. ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-04-23 17:01:36 .