Monday, Sept 29, 1884 I went to bed with a head ache last night and had a troubled sleep. Today I have been as in a troubled dream, depressed and half alarmed and discouraged. I have no doubt much of it is due to physical disorder. I wrote to Booth and read a review of Bayard Taylors life & letters in Sundays Tribune. Calvert and I took Park for a bath down at the South Rondout ferry and came back over the Common stopping to look at the view up the creek which was very lovely under the afternoon light. I always think of dear Gertrude when I come that way for once she wrote me about coming that way from Mr. Burgess' and looking at the sunset and thinking of me in her love for me, and what if it should ever come to her to walk there alone when she would no longer have me to think of. It is I who have walked there alone since that time and never without a sad regret for my darling whom I never cease to mourn for. We came through the cemetery by her grave and my mothers and Maurices and Gussies of whose sorrows and trials we spoke. O how sad is life as the years go by. I cut down and removed the ripe hollyhock stalks from the side of the house after dinner, thinking while I did it of my mother whose little garden I saw with its faded flowers and the weeds that have got the better of me in my absence. These hollyhocks were still in bloom, here and there a flower upon the stalks among the ripe seeds which rattled out as I cut them. They have been in bloom ever since June I think. Mrs. Cantine called this evening. I saw her for a few minutes. She seems very lady like and interesting. It has been like a summer day but with rather a rich atmosphere after a thunder shower in the night.
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