Viewing page 276 of 607

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

263

him to take my little "Upland farm" which he said he would make and effort to sell for me. I let him have it rather reluctantly and he is to send it back whenever I wish. He took it without the frame. Poor Calvert came n. He had been summoned on a Coroners Jury to set upon two bodies now lying dead. He wanted a little money as a bill of his against the Park is audited but not paid. He said I could think of him this afternoon looking at corpses. Calvert is very patient and has many things to try him. I go home for Thanksgiving by 4 O'clock train. The West Shore road was sold yesterday and passed into Vanderbilts hands as I found it would from the start. 

Friday November 27" 1885. I went home Wednesday afternoon. It was still storming. Tom met me at the station. It had snowed up there violently for two days and melted rapidly so that the roads were in the worst possible condition. It rained Thursday at intervals so that there had been a continuous storm even since last Saturday. We had our Thanksgiving dinner alone, My father, Sara, and I except that little Girard and daughter dined with us. Mary and Girard were invited down to Johns and Jimmy and Charlie had gone out to Flat=bush to their grandmothers. Sara invited Gustavas and Marietta but they did not come. I thank we never before sat down to so small a table on Thanksgiving day at our house. I think my father felt sad but I did not more than usual. I have a continuous sad and homesick feeling now and life seems to have lost much of its flavor. Still I feel capable of much happiness under circumstances of freedom from certain cares which I hope will one day cease. Annie Norton came up to call. She and Fred went up in the Train with me to spend Thanksgiving with John & Nannie. Sara and I were invited down there and spent the evening with them very pleasantly. Sara had a letter from Janette in which she spoke of a Spiritualist medium who is staying with them. She said Gussie came to her the other evenings and spoke to her in a whisper and told her Gertrude and our mother and Dwight and Maurice and Janey were there and to write to Lana and me to tell us Maurice was happy and that his last days had not affected his happiness as much as we perhaps imagined. Janette has the fullest faith in the genuineness of these communications. Somehow they have little effect upon me and yet I am not prepared and say there may not be more in them than I can account for. I came down this morning which was bright and cold with ice on the pools and have been painting on my picture all afternoon. Miss. Dufer came in with a scheme for sending a collection of American pictures to Berlin which I frankly told her I had no interest in. I wrote a note to Booth at the Albermarle telling him I was going to be here over Sunday and hoped he could come and see me. I feel dizzy and badly as I almost always do after coming from home. Attended a french class at Mrs. Scotts in one building, this being the first evening. We We intend learning to converse and shall probably have little to do with grammar. I found it very difficult to understand conversation and equally difficult to converse what I had read passably well.

Saturday 28" Painted all day on my picture which I have improved. Called to see Hubbard and he came to my room and looked at my two pictures which he liked. He said I thought I had a fine sky in this last picture but liked the other best as the whole. As I am not going  home tonight I stopped at 10 E. 10" St to leave word that I would dine with them tomorrow as they had invited me to in Rondout Thursday, but as I hoped to see Booth on Sunday I could not give them a decided answer. Spent the evening at the Club where 

Transcription Notes:
no [[?]]s, yeah ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-06 21:42:10