and “Abandoned Farmhouse”) My “Rainy Night” and “Silver Stream” are to be included in an exhibit of American Art, taken to London by the Wildenstein Galleries. This pleases me, especially the “Silver Stream” which I think is in some ways the best landscape I have painted.
                                                                                May 7, (Sat.)
     I really grow depressed today on account of the picture. Still I cannot free myself to begin. So I attack the yard fiercely cleaning up some, and working up the children’s gardens for them. This restores my spirit somewhat. What a boon it is to be able to work in the earth with one’s hands. How after digging and hoeing and raking, the whole prospect in renewed; one’s life is good, one’s yard and house and environment full of pregnant memory.
Evening the NBC concert. I was alive to it all. It opened with the Roman Carnival by Berlioz, then followed shorter compositions by four contemporary Americans, not all of whose name I can remember. The first “Siena Moini” - was a strong, ruthless masculine thing, another “Crazy House” suite, was clever in its bizarre way; “The Last Night” passed me by, as did “Negro Rhapsody” by John Powell. The latter as far as I could see, had not the least relation to Negro music. I would rather hear a spiritual, or a piece by Duke Ellington.
     The last item, was a symphony by Chausson. The first music I ever heard of his - tho I could not grasp much of it, I felt it