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Friday May 20" 1887. I discovered the currant bushes are infested with the currant worm and I spent a long time picking them off. It has been pretty warm and the same smoky atmosphere continues. I have felt almost despairing today thinking over affairs and my mind is occupied most of the time brooding over them. What would I not give to be released from this slavery. I wrote an inquiry to a country real estate firm in N.Y., Phillips & Wells as to the possibility of finding a purchaser for our place. In my desperation I do whatever promises the least hope. I also wrote to Dr's Taylor & Patchin telling them I thought I was not improved and asking advice as to certain movements. In the evening I took Girardie and Charlie up to the Academy of Music to see the play "The Blue and the Gray" It was very amateurish and mercilessly long. Girardie got tired and he and I came home a little before 11 o clock. Jamie was here when I got home having come up to spend Sunday. He is a fine, handsome fellow and just beginning to grapple with the problem for a pursuit for life. Wants to go to the West and do something which will keep him out of doors and has no liking for business which will keep him in an office.

Saturday 21. Down in the garden again picking off the currant worms of which I got quantities again. I walked over to the lots beyond Christie St. The fences are down and the land looks poor and neglected. So many things needed to be done and so little to do with. I bathed and dressed before dinner. After dinner Gerard told me there were boards off the side hill fence in two places and I had to go down and nail them on in the heat and got very warm, and so it goes. Petty annoyances every hour in the day. I am in despair brooding over our circumstances and pray for some one to come and buy this great place which is again but a sorrow and a trouble. I wish I could be serene but I cant. I keep wondering where all the money is coming from to pay all my obligations and the same old round of worry and torturing anxieties rises before me as it has for so many years

Sunday 22. Still the smoky weather with a hot south wind. I wrote to Mr. Sawyer and tried to write as cheerfully as I could. It was an effort to seem cheerful. Gerard told me a man wants to buy the lot adjoining Woolsey on Chestnut St and will give five hundred dollars for it 50 ft on Chestnut St and running back as I understood something like 400 ft. This is not a third what we consider it worth but Woolsey has sold him the adjoining lot 50x100 for $300. I meant to sell if possible at some price, but this is an awful come down and I am afraid he is not a purchaser who will add to the value of the adjoining property. We brought my father down stairs before dinner and he has spent most of the day on the back porch lying down most of the time. He had to be looked after all the while and I question whether he is not more comfortable in his room. I am about as worried and unhappy as a man can be. Sadie Crosby came up to see Marion and young Blackwell came later. They both staid to tea. I am in no mood to see any one.

Monday 23. I drove Jamie up to the 7.40 train and found it had been gone half an hour the time having been changed. He came back and went by the noon train. I went down town and got the map of our property from Girards office and brought it up home and spent the entire forenoon making a copy of it. It is the amended map Calvert and I settled upon last year. In the afternoon I went over to my studio and looked over my studies to think over what I should do to them. I dont seem able to get to work at them, there are so many things to take my attention. I wish I had nothing to think of but my art. That is what an artist should never surrender to any other consideration.

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