Thursday, Mar 3, 1881 Weir came and had his landscape sent to Giffords room to paint on it. I went to see it. I could not help telling him that it looked like a foreign picture and that I thought he would be criticised as having been influenced by what is called the "new school". I think the trouble with Weir is that he is beginning to be influenced too much by methods and that his work is not the expression of his impressions of Nature. I think to give permanent value to our work we must not lose sight of this controlling motive. I cannot work and am very unsettled and unhappy. I was not well at dinner time and could eat nothing owing to an indigestion from some thing I ate at lunch. Charlie Osman came down from Rondout. Downing went to Washington yesterday on the invitation of a friend to attend the inauguration of President Garfield. I attended a trustees meeting at the Century and after the meeting, Johnson, Weir and his brother and I sat together for a while and had a talk, but I am most unhappy mainly I think because my work is unsatisfactory and I cannot do any thing to interest me. I think constantly of my dear Gertrude and of all the happy past and the future looks so sad without her that I have no heart to meet it.
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