Friday, June 13, 1884 It has been a thoughtful day for me and I have had all I could do to contend against the saddest of thoughts. This morning the wind blew from the North and it has been so cool all day that my father has had a fire in the dining room. I worked about at various things feeling the loneliness of the house. I went over to the cemetery to see how the flowers were getting on. It is a year tonight since poor Maurice came home the last time and just such a melancholy wind is blowing as blew that night when Sara was alone here with him and my mother. I cant help thinking how he suffered there alone if he were conscious which it is a comfort to think he was not entirely. He has been in my thoughts all day as well as the others who have gone from us. I have thought too of dear Gertrude as indeed I do many times every day. Of the always satisfying charm of her mere presence and I almost wonder that life has any thing left for me. What a lovely woman! How rare and sweet a character and disposition. I love to think of her and to know that my life has been ruled by so lovely and admirable an influence as she was and always will be to me. The wind has made it a melancholy day and so at dinner I proposed to ride to my father and Cousin Rachel, and invited Girards wife to go with us. We drove out by the Roa-tina and out to Marys Mothers by the river road, stopped there for a few minutes and then went on until we reached the Flatbush road and so home by the Roa-tina. It proved a most charming ride and it did us all good. This evening Sara came home by the Powell and went down for her. Cousin Rachel is going down to Georges tomorrow to our great regret. I wish she could stay here. Sara and my father are going to Oneida Co. next week but Mary is coming up on Wednesday. I wrote to Fuller and invited him to come up for Sunday. Wrote to Mrs. Lydia Ely about my two pictures that I am going to send to Milwaukee, and to Mrs. Macey. The matting which Sara bought for my mothers room came today as well [as?] the two parlor shades which I measured wrongly. Tomorrow we will [put?] my mothers room in order.
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