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Monday 13" Took up the picture I painted for Mrs. Warren and worked on it all day. I am going to try to make a green picture of it. It was too brown & snuffy. Mary and I went up in the evening and called on Mrs. Anderson. Her friend Mr. Fletcher, the mother of Dr. Ryers wife died this summer and Mrs. Ryer is in New York now. 
   
Thursday 14" Have worked on the picture originally painted for Mrs. Warren all day and improved it, but I have been most anxious and unhappy. To calm my anxiety I received a letter from Selstidt in answer to one I wrote him on Thursday telling me the treasurer of the fund from which I am to be paid for my picture is in Europe but that he has been written to and that I will probably be paid before the end of the month. There are several pressing things I wanted and expected to pay from this and now I am disappointed. All my plans seem to miscarry and when I can not meet my engagements I am miserable. I have kept hopeful all winter thinking some of my efforts would result in success, but they all seem to fail. No one wants my pictures and I am fast drifting again into despondency and see ahead of me a long summer of anxiety and worry. As a family we do not seem to have the ability to make the moderate amount of money we need to live in our quaint way and yet we are industrious and careful. Calvert is in the same condition and as we grow old find ourselves helpless and superfluous. I called on Mrs. Frank Weeks and then went to the Club a little while but came to my room lonely, unhappy and disheartened.

Friday 15" I went up Broadway this forenoon to see three pictures of Van Benschoten who called here yesterday with a card from Henry Abbey. He lives next to John Burroughs at West Park and wanted me to go to see his pictures and tell him what I thought of them as he is going to offer them to the Exhibition of the American Artists and to the Prize fund Exhibition. I tried to get out of it by telling him they would show what they thought of them but he rather insisted and so I promised. They were as I supposed pretty poor. Ignorant - ignorant - and what is more expensive. I told him he seemed to have some innate feeling for color and tone but he was weak on facts and he needed constant study from nature. On my way up there I met poor Oscar in the street He was going to pass by me but I stopped as soon as I recognized him. He looked old, seedy and broken down. I told him the trouble with him was that he drank whiskey and that unless he stopped it would make an end of him. He didnt deny it, but he has got to where he cannot stop. I asked him to come and see me. Said Fred is in Europe trying to get up a steamship company- always on some great scheme to get rich in a hurry. I thought how unhappy it would have made dear Gertrude to see Oscar in such a condition. I told him frankly he was a much younger man than I am but that he looked old enough to be my grandfather. He says he is on the Herald but his clothes were old and poor and he looked the picture of a broken down man. While we were talking a man stopped and spoke to him. He too seemed an unsuccessful man and told Oscar he was.  When he passed on Oscar said he was a man who was in Mrs. Boadman's office when he was. It made me sad to see Oscar with the other dispiriting conditions I am contending with. It rained this afternoon and the weather is depressing. Downing came in in the evening and I spent the evening at home and came to my room feeling unhappy and sad

Saturday 16" We were all discouraged this morning. Mary would like to go up to Rondout with me to see Janette and Emily but their affairs are so pressing   

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