“I shall leave Albany and return to New York a week from to-day if there is no change in my prospects....  The more I think of making a push at New York as a permanent place of residence in my profession, the more proper it seems that it should be pretty soon.  There is now no rival that I should fear; a few more years may produce one that would be hard to overcome.  New York does not yet feel the influx of wealth from the Western canal but in a year or two she will feel it, and it will be advantageous to me to be previously identified among her citizens as a painter.

“It requires some little time to become known in such a city as New York.  Colonel T——­ is growing old, too, and there is no artist of education sufficiently prominent to take his place as President of the Academy of Arts.  By becoming more known to the New York public, and exerting my talents to discover the best methods of promoting the arts and writing about them, I may possibly be promoted to his place, where I could have a better opportunity of doing something for the arts in our country, the object at which I aim.”

“September 3. I have nothing to do and shall pack up on the morrow for New York unless appearances change again.  I have not had full employment since I have been in Albany and I feel miserable in doing nothing.  I shall set out on Friday, and perhaps may go to New Haven for a day or two to look at you all.”

He did manage to pay a short visit to his home, and then he started for New York by boat, but was driven by a storm into Black Rock Harbor and continued his journey from there by land.  Writing home the day after his arrival he says:  “I have obtained a place to board at friend Coolidge’s at two dollars and twenty-five cents a week, and have taken for my studio a fine room in Broadway opposite Trinity Churchyard, for which I am to pay six dollars and fifty cents a week, being fifty cents less than I expected to pay.”

There has been some increase in the rental price of rooms on Broadway opposite Trinity Churchyard since that day.

Further on he says:—­

“I shall go to work in a few days vigorously.  It is a half mile from my room to the place where I board, so that I am obliged to walk more than three miles every day.  It is good exercise for me and I feel better for it.  I sleep in my room on the floor and put my bed out of sight during the day, as at Washington.  I feel in the spirit of ‘buckling down to it,’ and am determined to paint and study with all my might this winter.”

The loving wife is distressed at the idea of his sleeping on the floor, and thus expresses herself in a letter which is dated, curiously enough, November 31:  “You know, dear Finley, I have always set my face as a flint and have borne my testimony against your sleeping on the floor.  Indeed, it makes my heart ache, when I go to bed in my comfortable chamber, to think of my dear husband sleeping without a bedstead.  Your mother says she sent one to Richard, which he has since told her was unnecessary as he used a settee, and which you can get of him.  But, if it is in use, do get one or I shall take no comfort.”