come to the historical value of the diary, we confess to a growing suspicion of it.  It is such a deadly weapon when it comes to light after the passage of years.  It has an authority which the spoken words of its keeper never had.  It is ’ex parte’, and it cannot be cross-examined.  The supposition is that being contemporaneous with the events spoken of, it must be true, and that it is an honest record.  Now, as a matter of fact, we doubt if people are any more honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it; and rumors, reported facts, and impressions set down daily in the heat and haste of the prejudicial hour are about as likely to be wrong as right.  Two diaries of the same events rarely agree.  And in turning over an old diary we never know what to allow for the personal equation.  The diary is greatly relied on by the writers of history, but it is doubtful if there is any such liar in the world, even when the keeper of it is honest.  It is certain to be partisan, and more liable to be misinformed than a newspaper, which exercises some care in view of immediate publicity.  The writer happens to know of two diaries which record, on the testimony of eye-witnesses, the circumstances of the last hours of Garfield, and they differ utterly in essential particulars.  One of these may turn up fifty years from now, and be accepted as true.  An infinite amount of gossip goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a moment’s contemporary publication.  But by-and-by it may all be used to smirch or brighten unjustly some one’s character.  Suppose a man in the Army of the Potomac had recorded daily all his opinions of men and events.  Reading it over now, with more light and a juster knowledge of character and of measures, is it not probable that he would find it a tissue of misconceptions?  Few things are actually what they seem today; they are colored both by misapprehensions and by moods.  If a man writes a letter or makes report of an occurrence for immediate publication, subject to universal criticism, there is some restraint on him.  In his private letter, or diary especially, he is apt to set down what comes into his head at the moment, often without much effort at verification.

We have been led to this disquisition into the fundamental nature of this private record by the question put to us, whether it is a good plan for a woman to keep a diary.  Speaking generally, the diary has become a sort of fetich, the authority of which ought to be overthrown.  It is fearful to think how our characters are probably being lied away by innumerable pen scratches in secret repositories, which may some day come to light as unimpeachable witnesses.  The reader knows that he is not the sort of man which the diarist jotted him down to be in a single interview.  The diary may be a good thing for self-education, if the keeper could insure its destruction.  The mental habit of diarizing may have some value, even when it sets undue importance upon trifles.  We