All the girls are keeping a diary because Miss Dearborn was very much
ashamed when the school trustees told her that most of the girls' and
all of the boys' compositions were disgraceful, and must be improved
upon next term. She asked the boys to write letters to her once a week
instead of keeping a diary, which they thought was girlish like playing
with dolls. The boys thought it was dreadful to have to write letters
every seven days, but she told them it was not half as bad for them as
it was for her who had to read them.
To make my diary a little different I am going to call it a Thought Book
(written just like that, with capitals). I have thoughts that I never
can use unless I write them down, for Aunt Miranda always says, Keep
your thoughts to yourself. Aunt Jane lets me tell her some, but does not
like my queer ones and my true thoughts are mostly queer. Emma Jane does
not mind hearing them now and then, and that is my only chance.
If Miss Dearborn does not like the name Thought Book I will call it
Remerniscences (written just like that with a capital R). Remerniscences
are things you remember about yourself and write down in case you should
die. Aunt Jane doesn't like to read any other kind of books but just
lives of interesting dead people and she says that is what Longfellow
(who was born in the state of Maine and we should be very proud of it
and try to write like him) meant in his poem:
“Lives of great men all remind us
We should make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.”
I know what this means because when Emma Jane and I went to the beach
with Uncle Jerry Cobb we ran along the wet sand and looked at the shapes
our boots made, just as if they were stamped in wax. Emma Jane turns in
her left foot (splayfoot the boys call it, which is not polite) and Seth
Strout had just patched one of my shoes and it all came out in the sand
pictures. When I learned The Psalm of Life for Friday afternoon speaking
I thought I shouldn't like to leave a patched footprint, nor have Emma
Jane's look crooked on the sands of time, and right away I thought Oh!
What a splendid thought for my Thought Book when Aunt Jane buys me a
fifteen-cent one over to Watson's store.
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