[page 1] Friday 30 Aug: /78
A letter from Mrs Read dated and mailed Aug: 12 came to day forwarded from Rome also newspapers of the 14"-but no letter from Mr +++ in reply to my 1. Aug: letter! I will wait until Sunday 1 Sep: then I will send him a registered letter which I have written to day.—a letter he must answer if he is alive We have had violent rains all day and I have head no walk even now the air or rather wind is not favourable—I have written a little on the Forlowia which[?] read a little in Taine's "France Contemporaine" a dreadfully tiresome book full of the [inserted] brushwood of detail and never a grand oak of an incident. Then I have read American newspapers and run through Lippincott for August and +++ it is 6 o c and the day
[page 2] nearly ended. I feel very listless and dull—weary and low spirited I need oxygen but have not the courage to go out—I'll do a little hard studying at something and rout[?] myself up before I go to bed But I'll "turn in" early and play for clear weather tomorrow when I can go out on the lake border and brighten up my old heart Poor dear Mrs Read! She is very desolate. "No one asks me to stay and make my home with them" she says pitifully. She has no home and very little money oh God! how thankful I am that I have been helped to earn a com fortable independence—so few women have had my blessings Left adrift as I was at 40 with ill health and little or no means! Indeed it was a "special Providence" That lamented & guided [inserted] my bark of labour
[page 3] You may work and work and make no gain; plant and +++, and dig and plough and recap[?] no harvest—but my labours have had their own little satisfactory success and I am indeed grateful. So now to work and no fretting over the "tardy Boon Hours" If the money does not come to day nor to morrow [sic] it must come some day and in the meanwhile I am not suffering If this lack of money had occurred last year what a misery it would have been. But now I have my regular engagement with the Telegraph and Boston Advertiser ensuring me $1000 a year and I am sincerely grateful—some money from my rents must come some time This night mare [sic] of silence must end—so to work & be cheerful.