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he is not yet ready to spend much money for a place, but I hoped to offer him so favorable terms that he might embrace the opportunity to get a place which I know he would like to own.- Mrs. Louise Broadhead was here to dinner and to stay over night. Sara had a talk with her relative to renting it for a boarding house, or for taking boarders, but all that is so entirely distasteful to me that I will not engage in it if it can possibly be avoided. Girard and I went out to Fox hall to see about the Frank Dubois lot which returns to us for failure to pay. We put up a notice "For sale" on it and talked with a woman whose house and lot adjoins. She seemed to think it not worth more than $400 and not much chance to sell it for that, and so my days, and my peace of mind goes in these uncongenial employments. I sigh for a simpler life without all this trouble.

Friday Sept. 3" 1886. Cool, autumnal weather. I went over to my studio and began a picture 20x30 of a late autumn composition. I want to paint a light toned, mellow picture. I drew it in and laid it in a general way and hope to make something out of it. But I have no new ideas and work, not with enthusiasm but to escape from myself. I have a half-dazed, unreal sensation with now and then a wave of hopelessness and extreme dejection. No one can half understand how I miss my dear Gertrude now for feeling as unhappy as I do I crave the close and sympathetic companionship I always found in her. I shall be glad when my time comes to go to her, for I see but little prospect of happiness in the future and dread the loneliness which inevitably comes to such as myself whose temperament unfits them to mingle much with people. I am hoping against hope that Coykendall may buy our place. I should have some spur to action then, but to look ahead to dragging along here on our insufficient income, forced to keep boarders and thus to destroy our domestic life, seems appalling to me. - I had a long letter from Mr. Sawyer yesterday giving me an account of his trip to Burlington, and most interesting to me, his visit to his sister Mrs. Buck and her husband. She is 84 and he 89. It was where I visited Gertrude in 1854 just before we were married. Mr. Buck was then about as old as I am now. What sorrowful changes since then.
[[left margin]] Cool and bright. [[/left margin]]

Saturday 4" The evenings are cool, almost chilly, although we have had no fire yet. Girards wife brought her cousin a Miss Garret over here this morning for me to see her paintings, which were poor enough and to go over to my studio. She teaches and I tried be as kind as I could although I could not say much. My father rode out with Jamie. He does not care to go far and would not go at all if we did not suggest it. He lies down for the greater part of the time even when he is not in bed. I made a new box to the drain down near the road. Am idle, miserable and unhappy. What is it all to end in. I am in despair when I look ahead and when I see how I shrink from any responsibility.- Cousin Rachel came today and shortly after Julia (Rockefeller) Van Valkesburgh and Ellen (Burnett) McIrving and her little girl. I confess I had to make an effort to see them and we did not ask them to stay. I do not feel like seeing any one. I came across a little book in which dear Gertrude kept an account of her personal expenses, in my book case today. It had a sad interest to me. I read too, a letter she wrote me just after we went off with our regiment full of apprehension and anxiety and overflowing with love and tenderness. O' for the touch of her loving hand tonight. I have finished Amiels journal. The record of a most sad life and am reading Matthew Arnolds "Literature and Dogma", but I crave something which sustains and not which critiques and destroys

Sunday 5" A calm, cool day. I wrote to Mr. Sawyer and to Mary. Am reading Matthew Arnolds Literature and Dogma. Am much interested in his theory of Israels idea of God as "the not ourselves which makes for righteousness". I think Humanity craves a more personal embodiment 

Transcription Notes:
2 [[?]]s ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-05-12 15:46:14 . Amiel's Journal by Henri-Frédéric Amiel