DIARIES

DIARIES:
To keep a diary regularly day by day is a capital training in methodical habits. Many having made up their minds to keep a diary, begin writing with great zeal and fluency for a few days, as long as they are carried on by the novelty of the idea: but a time they got tired of their  self impressed task, and their industry begins to flag. When this happen, the dairy gradually becomes scantier and  and more irregular until at least weeks and months are allowed to pass without any entry being made.
  The best way to avoid this lame and impotent conclusion is to fix a definite time every for writing the dairy and not to allow oneself to be diverted to anything else at the appointed time. It is also well to restrain our inclination to write at great length at the commencement of the dairy so that  we may be less likely to take a distaste to the work and may be the better able to keep our resolution of making regular entries every day. in this way we shall give due important in our chronicle to the successive events of our life and find our dairy a source of pleasure and of profit.
    When we writing letters, we often find our ideas fail us and are unable to think of anything not write about. In such a strait as this, a reference to our dairy, if it has well been kept, is sure to suggest something that is likely to interest our friends, and we are saved from the necessity of sending off a meager letter not worth has price of its postage-stamp.
  A dairy is also of great use to a student, as it enables him to take periodical retrospects of his work. Macaulay in his diary kept a record of the books he read. If we fellow the same excellent practice, it will help us every now and then to look back and determine whether we have been washing our time or not.
 A diary should also make us more accurate than we could otherwise be. It is surprising what unprecise statement men make sometimes about their own past experience. A great safeguard against such inaccuracy is to have an account of what we actually saw and did, clearly recorded in black and white.
 In all these ways the keeping of a diary may be found to be profitable employment of one's leisure. It is also likely to be a source of pleasure to future years, when by its help we recall to mind some half-forgotten episode of the past, and in imagination live over again the happy days that are gone. The diaries of eminent men, besides giving pleasures to their authors are full or interest to the world generally. The lately published journal of Walter Scott enables us more thoroughly to understand and admire the character of the greatest of novelist. The diary of Pepys is not only delight full reading for an idle hour, but also is of great value to the historian from the flood of light it throws upon the day of Charles II.