little long; but this may be only a passing sigh of the period. We
are far from expressing any preference for tall women over short women.
There are creative moods of the fancy when each seems the better. We can
only chronicle, but never create.

THE DEADLY DIARY

Many people regard the keeping of a diary as a meritorious occupation.
The young are urged to take up this cross; it is supposed to benefit
girls especially. Whether women should do it is to some minds not an open
question, although there is on record the case of the Frenchman who tried
to shoot himself when he heard that his wife was keeping a diary. This
intention of suicide may have arisen from the fear that his wife was
keeping a record of his own peccadilloes rather than of her own thoughts
and emotions. Or it may have been from the fear that she was putting down
those little conjugal remarks which the husband always dislikes to have
thrown up to him, and which a woman can usually quote accurately, it may
be for years, it may be forever, without the help of a diary. So we can
appreciate without approving the terror of the Frenchman at living on and
on in the same house with a growing diary. For it is not simply that this
little book of judgment is there in black and white, but that the maker
of it is increasing her power of minute observation and analytic
expression. In discussing the question whether a woman should keep a
diary it is understood that it is not a mere memorandum of events and
engagements, such as both men and women of business and affairs
necessarily keep, but the 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