e daily record which sets down feelings,
emotions, and impressions, and criticises people and records opinions.
But this is a question that applies to men as well as to women.

It has been assumed that the diary serves two good purposes: it is a
disciplinary exercise for the keeper of it, and perhaps a moral guide;
and it has great historical value. As to the first, it may be helpful to
order, method, discipline, and it may be an indulgence of spleen, whims,
and unwholesome criticism and conceit. The habit of saying right out what
you think of everybody is not a good one, and the record of such opinions
and impressions, while it is not so mischievous to the public as talking
may be, is harmful to the recorder. And when we come to the historical
value of the diary, we confess to a growing suspicion of it. It is such a
deadly weapon when it comes to light after the passage of years. It has
an authority which the spoken words of its keeper never had. It is 'ex
parte', and it cannot be cross-examined. The supposition is that being
contemporaneous with the events spoken of, it must be true, and that it
is an honest record. Now, as a matter of fact, we doubt if people are any
more honest as to themselves or others in a diary than out of it; and
rumors, reported facts, and impressions set down daily in the heat and
haste of the prejudicial hour are about as likely to be wrong as right.
Two diaries of the same events rarely agree. And in turning over an old
diary we never know what to allow for the personal equation. The diary is
greatly relied on by the writers of history, but it is doubtful if there
is any such liar in the world, even when the keeper of it is honest. It
is certain to be partisan, and more liable to be misinformed than a
newspaper, which exercises some care in view of immediate publicity. The
writer happens to know of two diaries which record, on the testimony of
eye-witnesses, the circumstances of the last hours of Garfield, and they
differ utterly in essential particulars. One of these may turn up fifty
years from now, and be accepted as true. An infinite amount of gossip
goes into diaries about men and women that would not stand the test of a
moment's contemporary publication. 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 know