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I having determined to lower it in order better to drain the cellar. This will take several days but it is a very much needed work and I shall be glad to accomplish it. It was so cold I thought it best for my father to remain in bed, but got him dressed in the afternoon when he came down stairs. He seems to me to get more and more feeble and gets about now with the greatest difficulty. I dread the cold weather on his account, he seems to have so little vitality. Dear me! How very sad life seems when the changes and the feeblenesses of our declining years are realized. I do not dare to think of what this house was a few short years ago, I try rather to forget it all in constant employment and in thinking of lifes daily demands and duties.

Thursday August 27" 1885. Still the wind from the North and the temperature autumnal. There was frost in portions of the North and all day it has seemed like a quiet, October day. I took my father out for a ride. We went down town and then to the Point to give Park a swim and get home for dinner. He sat on the back porch a while after dinner and then laid down while I worked in my mothers flower garden and when he got up I made a fire in the parlor for him, by which I sat alone and read this evening until Mary and Sara came home by the Powell. They had two glorious days for their trip to the city. Tom is at work digging up the drain from the cellar and it is pretty slow work on account of the net work of roots from the Elm tree in front of the parlor window. John McEntee, Girard and I are thinking of a fishing trip on Saturday to the head of the Rondout but have not positively decided yet. To me it will be a prospecting trip to see if I can find some sketching. Julia Dillon called just as my father and I were getting ready for our ride. She is to be at Johns while Nannie is in Boston for two or three weeks. Coming to my room as I did this evening with the moonlight outside and the vague shadows within makes me think of my dear Gertrude and her shadow lingering among these other shadows. I think of her and long for her when I think of her as for the one supreme Joy of my whole life vanished. Her tenderness, her grace, her sweet womanly instincts, her devotion to me are the treasures of my memory which never grow commonplace and never lose their inexpressible charms.

Friday 28" Went down town after breakfast. There was almost a frosty crispness in the air. Have been getting ready for our trip to the Head of the Rondout tomorrow. Girard and I are going as John cannot go and we expect to start at 5 o clock and breakfast at Shokan. Julia Dillon was here at dinner and Mrs. Cantins called shortly after breakfast. We took a drive this afternoon, my father, Julia Dillon, Mary, Sara and I. We left Sara in Kingston and drove out on the Saugerties road and crossing over came home by the Flat-bush road. My father looked more bent and feeble than usual and the ride fatigued him but I think it did him good as he ate a good supper and seemed bright in the evening. Sara had a letter from Lucy today, her second one from Fort Gaston.

Monday 31" Girard and I went to the Head of the Rondout on Saturday. Leaving here at 5. oclock in the morning we drove to Shokan where we breakfasted and fed our horse. We went through the Gulf past Wards & Mrs Wentworths cabins and up the hill to Hills Mill. All the way we encountered traces of the freshet of three weeks ago in

Transcription Notes:
freshet - the flood of a river from heavy rain ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-05 13:21:07