Thursday, October tenth.
It’s raining! All day has been overcast, but sharp and clear. It was for us all a day of hard work. We cleared up the woods between Olson’s cabin and ours carrying one large pile of brush from our door yard to the beach and burning another huge one. That was a wild sight as night came. It had become a great fire of logs burning steadily and lighting up all the woods around. It is still burning in the pouring rain. We sawed a little—always more than keeping pace with our consumption of wood. Rockwell worked almost the whole day and went to bed tired. I read to him an hour. He loves to hear poetry.
We set an elaborate contrivance to catch a magpie; and were humiliated by the bird who walked round and round the snare eying it wisely, then suddenly rushed in only far enough to secure a piece of decoy bait—and fled. Painted to-day making a good little sketch, but, on my first trial of the home-made canvas, finding it to need more priming. Work! work!
ONE OF ROCKWELL’S DRAWINGS