Thursday, Nov 30, 1882 Our Thanksgiving day was a very quiet one. About 11 o'clock we started out for a sleigh ride, Alice, Sara, my father, Maurice and I. The wind blew sharply from the N. W. and after getting a little beyond the City hall my father thinking it would be too cold for him we came back and left him and returned. He is very feeble and it seems to me this winter will be very trying to him. We drove through Kingston down to Wilbur to see the bridge and so home by the Strand. It was snug winter weather and although the snow had melted in the sheltered places it did not thaw in the shade. We had our dinner at 3. No one but my father and mother, Sara, Alice, Maurice and me. We used always to have so many here on such occasions when dear Gertrude was with us, but now I begin to realize that it is a trouble to have company. I wish we could have more servants and could invite our friends for it makes us all more cheerful. How dear Gertrudes absence has changed all our life. I felt it so strongly today. It is so gratifying to have Alice here for Gertrude loved her so dearly and she regards me as a brother and she somehow seems so very near to her I loved so dearly. We have talked of her a great deal and Sara is finishing her embroidered table cover and we have been looking over her work boxes and the pretty things with which she did her fancy work. Sometimes I have a vivid sense of how sweet it will be to have done with this life and be with her again as I believe I shall be one day. I had a letter from Booth written from Dublin on his 49th birth day Nov. 13. He seems to look longingly forward to coming home and settling down to roam no more. Girard and Mary came over in the evening and shortly after John & Nannie and Ettie and they spent the evening with us.
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