Sunday, Aug 26, 1883 It has been a cool pleasant day. A feeling of sadness has come over me when I have been alone in my room for I have been thinking of Dear Gertrude and of Maurice. So the absent come to us in our return to the places so closely identified with them. I have been looking over a bundle of papers which Maurice left in Girards safe. They were all the documents relating to his career in the navy and he evidently anticipating the day when he would have to be cared for had put them away against the day when he might need them to prove his services and his honorable discharge from the volunteer Navy. How useless now and how they brought back to me those sad years of the war when he was in the blockading squadron. Calvert and I walked over to the cemetery just before tea. The flowers were blooming and the morning glory vines completely covered Maurices grave. The flowers, petunias, on dear Gertrudes grave and the grass in that part of our lot have not done well on account I think of too much shade. How strange it seemed, and always will that these two, so closely allied to our household and our lives yet in so widely different ways, should be sleeping here now unconscious of all our sorrow and our regrets. Words can not picture the eternal sadness that lingers about this spot. We went to see the Weber Statue which was inaugurated at the firemans celebration last week. And as it is there is much that is good in it and considering it was made by a man who had had no training it is quite remarkable. One of the last things poor Maurice did was to write a description of this statue for the firemens paper and it was very judiciously done. There were a good many people in the cemetery and for that reason I seldom go there on Sundays. Some of the flags were still upon the soldiers graves which were placed there on Decoration Day. Maurice had looked forward with great interest to the Firemans Convention.
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