You will find it convenient for reference if you make a paragraph of every subject.  Date every day distinctly, with a much bolder handwriting than the body of the diary; and write the date on the right margin of the right page, and left margin of the left page, with the year at the top of the page only.  Skip a line or two instead of ruling between the days.  Thus:—­

=1876.=

=JANUARY 1,
SATURDAY.=

Pleasant and mild.

Vacation ends to-day.

Jo.  Harding is full of going on a walk to the
White Mountains next summer, and he wants me to go
too.

Made New-Year calls on Susie Smith, Mary Lyman,
Ellen Jenkins, Christie Jameson, and Martha
Buzzell.

=JANUARY 2,
SUNDAY.=

Warm again and misty.

Went to church.  Mr. Simpson’s pup followed him
in; and it took Simpson, Jenks the sexton, and two
small boys, to put him out.

Accompanied Susie Smith to the Baptist’s this
evening, and went home by way of Centre Street to
avoid the crowd.  Crowds are not so bad sometimes.

=JANUARY 3,
MONDAY.=

Still mild and pleasant, but cooler.

Went to school, and failed in algebra.  This X
business is too much for me.

Abel’s shoe-factory, next to our schoolhouse, caught fire this afternoon while we were at recess, and Mr. Nason dismissed the school.  We all hurrahed for Nason, and went to the fire.  Steamer No. 1 put it out in less than ten minutes after she got there.

          Home all the evening, studying.

If you are like me, you will be glad by and by if you note in your diary of the summer vacation a few dry statistics, such as distances walked, names of people you meet, steamers you take passage on, and, in general, every thing that interested you at the time, even to the songs you sing; for usually some few songs run in your head all through the tour, and it is pleasant to recall them in after-years.

Do not write so near the margins of the paper that the binder will cut off the writing when he comes to trim them.

CHAPTER XII.

“HOW TO DO IT.”

The following advice by Rev. Edward Everett Hale is so good that I have appropriated it.  You will find more good advice in the same book.[27]

“First, never walk before breakfast.  If you like you may make two breakfasts, and take a mile or two between; but be sure to eat something before you are on the road.

“Second, do not walk much in the middle of the day.  It is dusty and hot then; and the landscape has lost its special glory.  By ten o’clock you ought to have found some camping-ground for the day,—­a nice brook running through a grove; a place to draw, or paint, or tell stories, or read them