Page:Letters of Life.djvu/231

Rh of events and feelings, believing that it not only teaches the value of time, by turning attention to its minuter portions, but rescues life from dreamy forgetfulness, and deepens the lessons derived from God's varied discipline, by keeping it freshly in remembrance. To borrow the language of a beautiful writer:

"There is a richness about the life of one who keeps a diary, unknown to others. Time, thus looking back, is not a bare line, just stringing together personal identity, but intermingled and intertwined with thousands of slight incidents that give it beauty, kindliness, reality. It is not merely a collection, an aggregate of facts, that comes back to you; it is something far more excellent than that: it is the soul of days gone by, the dear auld lang syne itself, quickened, and in new robes. The perfume of the faded hawthorn hedge is there—the sweet breath of breezes that fanned our gray hair when it made sunny curls, smoothed down by hands that are in the grave."

Convinced as I was by experience of the benefits of this practice, which I had commenced unprompted at the age of eleven, I still hesitated to press upon those young pupils, amid their many studies, the requisition of a daily journal. I therefore devised a preparatory step, which I hoped might eventually lead to the desired result. During one of my short vacations with my parents, I made a number of blank books—methinks I see them now, with their long foolscap pages