The Deathless Diary by Agnes Repplier

Four ways there are of telling a curious world that endless story of the past which it is never tired of hearing. History, memoir, biography, and the diary run back like four smooth roads, connecting our century, our land, our life, with other centuries and lands and lives that have all served in turn to make us what we are. Of these four roads, I like the narrowest best. History is both partial and prejudiced, sinning through lack of sympathy as well as through lack of truth. Memoirs are too often false and malicious. Biographies are misleading in their flattery: there is but one Boswell. Diaries tell their little tales with a directness, a candor, conscious or unconscious, a closeness of outlook, which gratifies our sense of security. Reading them is like gazing through a small clear pane of glass. We may not see far and wide, but we see very distinctly that which comes within our field of vision.

In those happy days when leisure was held to be no sin, men and women wrote journals whose copiousness both delights and dismays us. Neither "eternal youth" nor "nothing else to do" seems an adequate foundation for such structures. They were considered then a profitable waste of time, and children were encouraged to write down in little books the little experiences of their little lives. Thus we have the few priceless pages which tell "pet Marjorie's" story; the incomparable description of Hélène Massalski's schooldays at the Abbaye de Notre Dame aux Bois; the demure vivacity of Anna Green Winslow; the lively, petulant records of Louisa and Richenda Gurney; the amusing experiences of that remarkable and delightful urchin, Richard Doyle. These youthful diaries, whether brief or protracted, have a twofold charm, revealing as they do both child-life and the child itself. It is pleasant to think that one of the little Gurneys, who were all destined to grow into such relentlessly pious women that their adult letters exclude the human element absolutely in favor of spiritual admonitions, was capable, when she was young, of such a defiant sentiment as this: "I read half a Quaker's book through with my father before meeting. I am quite sorry to see him grow so Quakerly. " Or, worse and worse: "We went on the highway this afternoon for the purpose of being rude to the folks that passed. I do think being rude is most pleasant sometimes."