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348 Friday Sept. 24" 1886. Girard brought me the money on my note discounted at noon and I have my trunk all packed to go to Arkville tomorrow morning. I telegraphed Whittredge I would come in the morning train, and wrote to Eastman but forgot to mail it with other letters. I took father down to Rondout for a short ride as the weather was mild and bright. I paid Dempseys bill and sent checks to Turck, to Manterstock and to Meyer for their bills. My father did not care to ride farther than to Rondout and back. The man came from Canfields and put the Hall store in order, but like every thing else it is wearing out and I think will not go more than this winter. It had to be tinkered in rather a makeshift manner. I feel badly about leaving home, as I always do, but I seem to be so necessary here now that I feel depressed at going away. Mrs Knight is coming tomorrow to spend Sunday with Sara so that she will not be alone at first. I hope I can get some ideas for pictures which will be a great encouragement and that Whittredge will be inclined to be kind and companionable. I think a little release from the daily brooding over our affairs will give me a little encouragement and enterprise. All effort seems burdensome now and that is wrong, for life is made up of effort. If I could only look hopefully forward again it would be a blessing. Thursday Oct. 14" I returned this morning from Arkville where I went Sept. 25" to join Whittredge who with his family have been spending the summer there. Van Elton and his wife have also been there but left some time ago. We were in the same house we were in in 1873. It is a most interesting region and there is a great variety of fine material, but I have been consumed with melancholy and have had little heart in my work. I was just getting interested as I felt obliged to leave to attend to affairs at home. I wanted the Whittredges to come home with me but he had commenced a study which he was in hopes to finish today. It rained a little shortly after I left and has been dark and threatening all day and I doubt if he could work. Sara telegraphed me yesterday to bring them along. I found her and Tom at the station expecting all of us and she was disappointed they did not come as she had dinner for them and the house all open to receive them. It looked very charming here at home. My father looked and seemed very well and I found Tom had got in the corn fodder in excellent condition which I feared he had not done. I console myself with the reflection that the weather is likely to be cold and changeable out there and that probably I would have been very lonely if I had stayed as the Whittredges leave tomorrow. Mrs. Beard came out there a week ago ill and will remain until Nov. 1" Beard is to come there from Chicago where he is in charge of the exhibition. My work has not been satisfactory and I have been very despondent but the Autumn was so fine I began to have a little of the old feeling and could have sketched with something of the old pleasure. I constantly thought of dear Gertrude who was with me there thirteen years ago and I came home today because it is the anniversary of her death and it happens I am almost always away from home at that time. How vividly all that sad scene has been before me. At ten minutes before seven the hour at which she died, I came up here to my room in the dimness of the evening half hoping some reflection of her loving spirit might revisit this sad place but nothing but the silence and the darkness responded to my vain fancy. This eternal sorrow sits in her vacant place and will until I join her in her far abode.- Lucy, Andrews and Sedgwick are still in Wilmington but Lucy expects to come home Saturday. Joe Tomkins has been in New York with Gertrude - has written his foolish letters to Lucy wanting to go there to meet Andrews and has worried us all anew. What a restless tormenting mortal, as if life were not full enough of sadness without this senseless worry. We do not know what he will do next and wait
