Thursday, Oct 1, 1885 This morning a box of grapes and pears I packed yesterday went by Express to Tom McEntee and I hope he and [Sara?] are enjoying its contents this evening. Harry was with me in the garden as I gathered the vegetables and was interested to know how certain kinds grew as for instance Brussels Sprouts. He is a bright interesting fellow and I am sure I should grow to like him better and better. After dinner I bade him and Julia good bye as I had to go to Kingston to fulfill my duty as a witness. When I arrived there however Clearwater told me the case had been disposed of and I might go home, which I immediately did and got back just before they started for the station. My father and Sara went up them and Tom drove while I staid at home and read in Taylors Egypt and Iceland. The day has been very warm and the country is getting dry and dusty and I have no inclination to go off the hill. When they had all gone suddenly a sense of great loneliness fell upon me and I thought of my dear Gertrude with an overwhelming sense of her absence. So lonely and sad the unpeopled rooms seemed that going into the parlor awoke the sad memories of all the sorrows and losses of the past few years. When Sara and my father returned she too seemed oppressed with the loneliness of the house. Then she told me of Girards wife having sent for her yesterday and telling her her troubles and anxieties about Girard, so that now I have a new and deep anxiety for him. Life as one grows older seems fuller of trouble and anxiety instead of growing serene and restful. So many families that were once prosperous and respected seem to end in obscurity and often in poverty and disgrace that I often fear it may be our fate. I so often feel a lack of confidence in my ability to hold and keep up our home, that any added anxiety quite discourages me. I have no faith in any higher power to assist and support me save as that power is manifested in any one self in the strength and courage to meet obstacles. The Universe is so grand a whole and I am such an atom that my failure and my destruction may be demanded as the price of unwisdom and the ignorant violation of laws I have failed to learn or at least misinterpreted.
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