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Thursday October 1st 1885. This morning a box of grapes and pears I packed yesterday went by Express to Tom McEntee and I hope he and Sara are enjoying its contents this evening. Harry was with me in the garden as I gathered the vegetables and was interested to know how certain kinds grew as for instance Brussels Sprouts. He is a bright interesting fellow and I am sure I should grow to like him better and better. After dinner I bade him and Julia good bye as I had to go to Kingston to fulfill my duty as a witness. When I arrived there however Clearwater told me the case had been disposed of and I might go home, which I immediately did and got back just before they started for the station. My father and Sara went up then and Tom drove while I staid at home and read in Taylors Egypt and Iceland. The day has been very warm and the country is getting dry and dusty and I have no inclination to go off the hill. When they had all gone suddenly a sense of great loneliness fell upon me and I thought of my dear Gertrude with an overwhelming sense of her absence. So lonely and sad the unpeopled rooms seemed that going into the parlor awoke the sad memories of all the sorrows and lows of the past few years. When Sara and my father returned she too seemed oppressed with the loneliness of the house. Then she told me of Girards wife having sent for her yesterday and telling her her troubles and anxieties about Girard, so that now I have a new and deep anxiety for him. Life as one grows older seems fuller of trouble and anxiety instead of growing serene and restful. So many families that were once prosperous and respected seem to end in obscurity and often in poverty and disgrace that I often fear it may be our fate. I so often feel a lack of confidence in my ability to hold and keep up our home, that any added anxiety quite discourages me. I have no faith in any higher power to assist and support me save as that power is manifested in my own self in the strength and courage to meet obstacles. The Universe is so grand a whole and I am such an atom that my failure and my destruction may be demanded as the price of [[?]] and the ignorant violation of laws I have failed to learn or at best misinterpreted. 

Friday 2" Dull, profitless days of brooding over worries and anxieties. The morning dawned grey and with promise of rain which we need. Mr. Bray from whom I received a note last evening, the second of the new special delivery, came for me at half past 9 to go up to Kingston to testify in his suit concerning the Photo-gravures. We went to the Court House where Judge Kinyon was presiding over a dog trial in which one of the attorneys was haranguing the jury. Then I went over to the Barlyots studio to examine the Photo-gravures. Barlyot is an artist an awfully poor one. He showed me his sketches, pretty feeble ones and his pictures equally poor. He teaches and I dare say makes a living as best he can. Finally about noon L[[?]] and Bray came to say the case was adjourned until December and we came home. After dinner I packed Marys annual preserves and cherry Garnish which was no small job, hunting up boxes and trying to get them all in. Then I picked the balance of the Vergalieu pears, only a few on the small trees and sat down to "Romola" which I have commenced. My father did not come down stairs until 3 o clock. We were sitting in the parlor by a little fire when Mr. Louisbergs daughter and a Miss Hornbeck called. She is one of the trained nurses and seems a bright woman. They staid until nearly tea time. After my father retired Sara and I sat in the parlor and talked of our troubles and anxieties and upon the Hillsboro affair, when the door opened and Calvert walked in having come up in the Powell He told us that Gertrude Tomkins walked in to their apartment while they were at breakfast. She cried and seemed a good deal affected but they were glad to see her and gave her a cordial welcome. Calvert

Transcription Notes:
last word on page completed using first on following page 2 [[?]] Vergalieu pears are mentioned in the book "The Pears of New York" by U. P. Hedrick