I told Aunt Jane I was going to begin my Remerniscences, and she says
I am full young, but I reminded her that Candace Milliken's sister died
when she was ten, leaving no footprints whatever, and if I should die
suddenly who would write down my Remerniscences? Aunt Miranda says the
sun and moon would rise and set just the same, and it was no matter if
they didn't get written down, and to go up attic and find her piece-bag;
but I said it would, as there was only one of everybody in the world,
and nobody else could do their remerniscensing for them. If I should die
tonight I know not who would describe me right. Miss Dearborn would
say one thing and brother John another. Emma Jane would try to do me
justice, but has no words; and I am glad Aunt Miranda never takes the
pen in hand.
My dictionary is so small it has not many genteel words in it, and I
cannot find how to spell Remerniscences, but I remember from the cover
of Aunt Jane's book that there was an “s” and a “c” close together in
the middle of it, which I thought foolish and not needful.
All the girls like their dairies very much, but Minnie Smellie got Alice
Robinson's where she had hid it under the school wood pile and read
it all through. She said it was no worse than reading anybody's
composition, but we told her it was just like peeking through a keyhole,
or listening at a window, or opening a bureau drawer. She said she
didn't look at it that way, and I told her that unless her eyes got
unscealed she would never leave any kind of a sublime footprint on
the sands of time. I told her a diary was very sacred as you generally
poured your deepest feelings into it expecting nobody to look at it but
yourself and your indulgent heavenly Father who seeeth all things.
Of course it would not hurt Persis Watson to show her diary because she
has not a sacred plan and this is the way it goes, for she reads it out
loud to us:
“Arose at six this morning--(you always arise in a diary but you say
get up when you talk about it). Ate breakfast at half past six. Had soda
biscuits, coffee, fish hash and doughnuts. Wiped the dishes, fed the
hens and made my bed before school. Had a good arithmetic lesson, but
went down two in spelling. At half past four played hide and coop in the
Sawyer pasture. Fed hens and went to bed at eight.”
She says she can't put in what doesn't happen, but as I don't think her
diary is interesting she will ask her mother to have meat hash instead
of fish, with pie when the doughnuts give out, and she will feed the
hens before breakfast to make a change. We are all going now to try and
make something happen every single day so the diaries won't be so dull
and the footprints so common.
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