Viewing page 228 of 607

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

206

to go away from home. I told him Mr. Cantine said the man he was going with was a good man and he would have a good home, and that if he would be a good boy and do his duty I would be a friend to him. I said he was old enough now to help his mother who had had a hard time trying to keep her little family together. The poor little fellow cried and wiped his eyes but said nothing. I suppose the change looked formidable to him. I bought him a nice suit of Tweed clothes for five dollars a shirt and a comb, but Mr. Cantine had gone by two o'clk train either having gone earlier than he intended or Girard misunderstood him. So he will probably go tomorrow. After I came back I worked a little more on my picture. After tea I drove down to Ned Tomkins and made a call and got 150 celery plants. He also gave me a great hand full of sweet peas and some lovely roses. A dreadful accident occurred on Lake Minnetonka near Minneapolis, yesterday I think, in which Sam Coykendalls brother John, his wife & child, his father-in-law, his mother-in-law and nine others of his family lost their lives in a terrible squall which caught them while they were on the lake in a small steam launch. Sara went out there this morning. I wrote to John Andrews last night. Sara had a letter from Lucy today in which she says they go to Fort Gaston Aug. 4" and that Ray and his wife have already gone.

Tuesday 14". My 57" birthday, alarmingly near the sixties. Still I am well and active and happier than I have been for a long time so that I can face the flying years with something like serenity. It rained all forenoon but cleared in the afternoon. Tom under my direction set out two hundred celery plants. I went over to my studio but it was too dark to paint this forenoon and I spent a couple of hours braiding on the bark. Mr. Cantine came up to see me about Robbie. He is to go up to Saugerties with him tomorrow at 2:30. A letter from Alice today tells us she will be here tomorrow at 6:10 via Albany and West Shore road. I send Lucy her satchel yesterday by Express. The sky at twilight this evening was very beautiful and there was a clear cut crescent moon. It was so low and rich yet full of light. How like a dead wall would my sky have seemed in comparison, in the "Desolated Shrines" which is meant to give about this same effect.

Wednesday 15. Picked the late cherries over near my studio and on the little tree down in front of the house, after which I drove my father, Sara and Mary out for a ride, first down town where I did some errands then by the Old Steep Rocks road to the Flat-bush hill and home by the Alms House to dinner. It has been a lovely still and comfortably cool day. After dinner I took Robbie Burns by appointment up to the two thirty train where I met Mr. & Mrs Cantine who took charge of him to his new house in Saugerties. He went off in good spirits, I presume a ride on the train being a great novelty to him. There was a throng of people at the station going out to the mountains, filling five cars on the N & D road. Mary and I drove up to meet Alice who came in the 6.10 train with her two little children Bella and Gertrude to spend a month with us.

Thursday 16" Mr. Cantine came here this morning bringing Robbie back with him. He was homesick and cried and Mrs. Snyder drove down to his house and left him and cleared out. Robbie looked ashamed but disappeared after breakfast. He is well fitted 

Transcription Notes:
too many [[?]] Saugerties is a town in the northeastern corner of Ulster County, New York. The population was 19,038 at the time of the 2020 Census, a decline from 19,482 in 2010. The village of the same name is located entirely within the town. Part of the town is inside Catskill Park . ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-04 17:03:46