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cemetery. One pink morning-glory was in flower among the frost blackened vines on Gussies grave. On Gertrudes a few Nasturtiums still blossomed feebly among the ruins of the frost. On Maurices grave the little flag placed there on decoration day was folded in a tendril of the smitten morning-glory while on my mothers all had perished. I came home sad and despondant.

Sunday Oct. 26" 1884. I blackened my stove today and got my hands already rough and sore in a still more blackened and fearful condition. It was very cold last night the mercury marking 20° this morning. My father said he had slept cold as I did. It has been cold all day and this afternoon I started my fire. This evening it is milder with prospect of a storm. I wrote to Downing and to Alice and sent $27 to Roch on a/c. Julia Dillon was here at tea and stays over night. My father has been more feeble today more because I think he makes no effort against it. Life seems triste and dull here just now.

Monday 27" Went down town after breakfast and did many errands getting stove pipe fitted &c. Put up the stove in the upstairs store room and then, after 11 o clock, went over to my studio, built a fire and worked on my picture all day, improving it very much. I feel now that I shall be able to make something of it. There is no satisfaction like congenial labor. When my work is at all satisfactory I am happy. I felt irritable this evening. The house was hot and my father is so cold he nearly roasts us. He gets very careless in many things as old men are apt to, and he never did think it worth his while to conform to the customs of polite society, and now that all these things are more of a trouble he does many things which irritate me. I do not say anything to him for fear of hurting his feelings but for his own sake I do not want him to become careless and indifferent.

[[left margin]] x [/left margin]] Tuesday 28" It has been cloudy and warm and rained a little. I went over to my studio after I had dressed my father and commenced a picture 15x18 from one of this falls pencil sketches. While I was at work Minnie came over and a very excited voice called to me to come quick as something dreadful was the matter. I ran out in the rain without my hat thinking something had occurred to my father. "No" she said "over at Mr. Girards. There I found the house in a tumult and the garret filled with smoke and a strong smell of burning paper or rugs. I found the fire was under the floor and had Mary telephone to Firard to send an engine up as I found the fire would soon break out. The upshoot was that at last we found fragments of burned paper and sticks near the chimney in a depression and it turned out that the children had been playing there and had built a fire in a piece of stove pipe and which they had finally trampled out themselves. It was about a miracle they had not set the house on fire. Meanwhile the fire bells rang and a wild horde of boys came pouring up one side hill and swarming all over the place, the evil birds of prey who start out on every such occasion. Girard came driving up expecting to see his house in flames, although we had countermanded the order for the engine. A hose carriage came up and the engines were at the foot of the hill. The rabble then directed itself to our apple trees but I started it off and went to work again but it spoiled my day and gave me a shock of anxiety, for it is the second time this fall I have been called over to Girards in haste, once to put out a burning kerosene lamp which had caught fire within - Sara had a letter from Lucy the first time since she had heard of my fathers illness. He seemed very depressed today, not that he is 

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