page of no-matter-what, and then immediately to write
down--in one's own words or in the author's--one's full recollection
of it. A quarter of an hour a day! No more! And it works like magic.

This brings me to the department of writing. I am a writer by
profession; but I do not think I have any prejudices in favour of the
exercise of writing. Indeed, I say to myself every morning that if
there is one exercise in the world which I hate, it is the exercise of
writing. But I must assert that in my opinion the exercise of writing
is an indispensable part of any genuine effort towards mental
efficiency. I don't care much what you write, so long as you compose
sentences and achieve continuity. There are forty ways of writing in
an unprofessional manner, and they are all good. You may keep "a full
diary," as Mr. Arthur Christopher Benson says he does. This is one of
the least good ways. Diaries, save in experienced hands like those of
Mr. Benson, are apt to get themselves done with the very minimum of
mental effort. They also tend to an exaggeration of egotism, and if
they are left lying about they tend to strife. Further, one never
knows when one may not be compelled to produce them in a court of
law. A journal is better. Do not ask me to define the difference
between a journal and a diary. I will not and I cannot. It is a
difference that one feels instinctively. A diary treats exclusively of
one's self and one's doings; a journal roams wider, and notes whatever
one has observed of interest. A diary relates that one had lobster
mayonnaise for dinner and rose the next morning with a headache,
doubtless attributable to mental strain. A journal relates that
Mrs. ----, whom one took into dinner, had brown eyes, and an agreeable
trick of throwing back her head after asking a question, and gives her
account of her husband's strange adventures in Colorado, etc. A diary
is

All I, I, I, I, itself I

(to quote a line of the transcendental poetry of Mary Baker G. Eddy).
A journal is the large spectacle of life. A journal may be special or
general. I know a man who keeps a journal of all cases of current
superstition which he actually encounters. He began it without the
slightest suspicion that he was beginning a document of astounding
interest and real scientific value; but such was the fact. In default
of a diary or a journal, one may write essays (provided one has the
moral courage); or one may simply make notes on the book