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My father has seemed very feeble and Mary and I both think he gradually fails. Still it may be owing to the day which seems to have a depressing effect on all of us. I wrote to Alice and to Lucy. It rained towards evening.

Monday Aug. 24th 1885. Took Park down to the South Rondout ferry for a bath and went to the Post Office. No word from Mrs. Warren. I begin to fear there may be some difficulty about the picture for I certainly ought to have had some word before this time. Sam Johnson McEntee and he now thinks he will not be able to go to the head of the Rondout. I am disappointed for I want to go there to take a look at the stream with a view to sketching. It was very hot and close this morning and all forenoon. I went to Kingston taking my father along, to pay Luke Meneis blacksmith bill. This afternoon we have had a succession of heavy thunder showers the lightning striking in Kingston. A shower is passing now as I write. Wrote to Miss Nesmith this afternoon and to Bouyer. I am not as busily employed as I would like to be and begin to wish I were sketching. Am greatly enjoying reading again Taines Voyage en Italie.

Tuesday 25" It has rained all day with the energy of an old fashioned North Easter and has been so cold that I was obliged to put on my winter suit. I built a fire in the parlor after dinner and we sat there and read and talked as we used to in such rainy days. My father did not get up until after dinner and he sat with us. He said he felt very stiff today and he did seem very feeble and helpless. I went down to the Post Office after breakfast and got a letter from Mrs. Warren. She has finally, after thinking over it for nearly a fortnight concluded to have me send her picture to their city house. I wrote her today I would send it tomorrow if the weather were favorable and I sent her the price $600 and the frame $30. I hope there will be no delay or dissatisfaction for I want the money to meet obligations but somehow I have an apprehension that there will be delays, just because I need the money I presume. Such days as this one thinks of the past and the changes and the destructions of the years. I have thought of dear Gertrude, so many things in the parlor recall her, the work of her hands, her [[?]] piano and the impress of her taste in all things, and remembering her so fondly, sometimes a great wave of discouragement and hopelessness sweeps over me bringing an awful sense of the vanity and futility of life. It is well for me to refrain from looking too far ahead

Wednesday 26" How lonely and melancholy this house has seemed today. Sara and Mary went to New York this morning by the Powell to be gone until tomorrow night and I have been alone here with my father who did not get up until afternoon. The wind blew from the north and the air was chilly and Autumnal but this afternoon there have been splendid and with cloud effects and the landscape has been of an incomparable richness. The first thing I did this morning was to box Mrs. Warrens picture over at my studio and about 10 o'clock the Express called for it. Then I put some shingles on the roof where it leaked yesterday, got the vegetables from the garden and attended to a variety of duties, and finally set Tom out with digging up the drain from the cellar in front of the house