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[[left margin]] Cool. Cool & delightful. Wind N. Cool and delightful with N wind [[/left margin]]
[[?]] feeling and resolved I would try not to be troubled. My box of sketches came from N.Y. and I went over to my studio after dinner and opened it and made some preparations toward beginning a picture. Tom had finished drawing the winters supply of coal and had got the place all cleaned up and was shutting the window when one of the sides of the bin broke loose at the bottom and the coal all poured into the cellar drain. This utterly discouraged me. I had to go and change my clothes and help Tom get the thing repaired which involved shoveling over a great part of the coal, a great dust and a most disagreeable job. I was covered with dust and Tom was black, but we finally got it secured, but it destroyed my serenity and made me unhappy, for I dislike to be obliged to do such dirty work, and there is no one else to do it. - I find my greatest worries are in anticipation. I see great demands in the future and no resources to meet them, but some how I have got along thus far. There seems to me however a limit and I am always living in the fear that the limit is reached. - Mary sprained her ankle this morning and is confined to her room, which is most unfortunate mow that Sara is away. We had a letter from Sara today. Her train was half an hour late in Utica and the Waterville train had gone. It rained and she was obliged to rail several hours and then go to Waterville, but fortunately they met her there and she not not arrive at Janettes until 10 o'clock in the evening - Mr + Mrs Ed. Tomkins called here yesterday. Lucy told me Mrs. Tomkins had received a letter from Laura asked if they had a nook to put her in as she wanted to come here to see her dear old grandfather! Was there ever greater persistence in an utterly foolish business. I presume that is one of the trials of the near future. Laura seems fated to make herself odious. I wrote to Kurtz today at Louisville asking him if my picture from Detroit had been sent there. 
     

Thursday Aug. 19" 1886. 
I went over to my studio after breakfast and commenced a twilight picture and have worked on it until 3 o'clock and been perhaps fairly successful. But I have the feeling that I am doing it in the hope of selling it and not because it is a pleasure or to give expression to some decisive idea. I am very unhappy and the days go by in sadness and I feel myself tossed about by fears and apprehensions which I cannot master. It is too sorrowful that ones life should be so thwarted and twisted by sordid and mean anxieties and that we should not have the wisdom to rise above them.  I cannot enjoy this beautiful weather and am only glad when I close my eyes in sleep and sad when the morning comes. In days like these I think of my dear Gertrude and the loneliness of my life without her, and yet with some thing like compensation in the reflection that she is spared the sorrow that pursues me. I ought to be happier with my sisters and Lucys children here, but the children seem to make me more unquiet I am sorry to say and I am afraid I am not sympathetic with their enjoyments as I should. All this adds to my trouble and I am thoroughly unhappy. 

Friday 20" A serene and beautiful day. Jamie and I picked the Bartlett pears down by the wood shed Senior Westbrook called to see about the ownership of a lot in Vaux hall bought by Dubois of my father and which will be sold for taxes - some $34. I am really unable to pay the taxes and saw the lot worth perhaps a hundred dollars. O I am so tired of this state of dependence that I sometimes feel I cannot endure it. Our house here is becoming     

Transcription Notes:
its not studies or study, its a 'studio' he is an artist and works in his 'studio' not a study ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-11 17:32:13