The weekly north Iowa times. [volume] (McGregor, Iowa) 1857-1867, 1862-01-15
f. McGREGOR, IOWA. WEDNESDAY, JAM Is, 1862
Keeping q Diary.

| AeepSng q diary.
If man keeps no diary, the path crum
bles away behind him as his feet leav: it
and days gone by are but little more than Z
blank, broken by a few distorted shadows
His life is all confined within the limits o
to day. Who does not know how ilnper
feet thing memory is? 1t not merely for.
gets it misleads. Things in memory dc
not merely fade away, preserving as they
fade their own lineaments so long as they
can be seen; they change their aspect, they
change their place, they turn to something
quite different from the fact. On the pic
ture Of the past, which picture unaided by
any written record sets before us, the per.
spective is entirely wrong. How capri.
ciously some events seem quite recent,
which the diary shows are really far away
and how accountably many things look far
away, which in truth are not left many
weeks behind us! A man might almos,
as well not have lived at all as entirely to
forget what he did on those departed days.
But think that almost every person wo'd
feel great interest in looking back, day
by day, upon what he did and thought upon
that day twelvemonths, that day three or
five years.
The trouble Of writing diary is very
small. A few lines, few words, written
at the time, suffice, when you look at them,
to bring all (what the Yankees CALI the
surroundings Of that season before you.--
Many things come up again, which you
know quite well you never would have
thought Of again, but for your glance at
those words, and still which you would bc
sorry to have forgotten.
There must be richness about the life
Of person who keeps diary, unknown
to other men. And Il million more little
links and ties must bind him to the mem
bers Of his family circle, and to all among
whom he lives. Life, to him looking back,
is not bare line, strnging together his
personal identity; it is surrounded, inter-
twined, entangled with thousands and thou
sands Of slight incidents, which give beauty,
kindness, reality.
Some folks life is like an oak walking,
stick, straight and vanished useful, but
hard and bare. Other mems life 'and such
may yours and mine, kindly reader, ever
beg is like that oak when it was not stick,
but branch, and waved, leaf:enveloped,
and with lots of little twigs growing out Of
it, upon the summer tree, and yet more
precious than the power Of the diary to call
up again host Of little circumstances and
facts, is its power to bring back the hides
cribabc but keenly felt atmosphere of those
departed days. The old times come over
you. 1t is not merely collection, an ag-
gregate Of facts, that comes back; it is
something far more excellent than that-it
is the soul Of days long ago; it is the dear
auld lang-syne itself! Th: perfume Of haw-
thorn hedges is there; the breath of breezes
that famed our gay hair when it made
sunny curls, often smoothcd down by the
hands that are gone; the sunshine on the
grass where these old fingers made daisy
aud snatcheS of music, compared
with which anything you hear at the opera
is extremely poor. Therefore keep you
diary, my fricnd.-London Magazine.