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 confess that, never having seen a woman’s private diary (except those that have been published), we do not share the popular impression as to their tenuity implied in the question put to us.  Taking it for granted that they are full of noble thoughts and beautiful imaginings, we doubt whether the time spent on them could not be better employed in acquiring knowledge or taking exercise.  For the diary forgotten and left to the next generation may be as dangerous as dynamite.

THE WHISTLING GIRL

The wisdom of our ancestors packed away in proverbial sayings may always be a little suspected.  We have a vague respect for a popular proverb, as embodying folk-experience, and expressing not the wit of one, but the common thought of a race.  We accept the saying unquestioning, as a sort of inspiration out of the air, true because nobody has challenged it for ages, and probably for the same reason that we try to see the new moon over our left shoulder.  Very likely the musty saying was the product of the average ignorance of an unenlightened time, and ought not to have the respect of a scientific and traveled people.  In fact it will be found that a large proportion of the proverbial sayings which we glibly use are fallacies based on a very limited experience of the world, and probably were set afloat by the idiocy or prejudice of one person.  To examine one of them is enough for our present purpose.