Sl'KINt; .JOTTINGS 1.07 



countryman, especially of a meditative turn, 

 who likes to preserve the flavor of the passing 

 moment, or to a person of leisure anywhere, 

 who wants to make the most of life, a journal 

 will be found a great liel}). It is a sort of de- 

 posit account wherein one saves up bits and frag- 

 ments of his life that would otherwise be lost to 

 him. 



What seemed so insignificant in the passing, 

 or as it lay in embryo in his mind, becomes a 

 valuable part of his experiences when it is fully 

 unfolded and recorded in black and white. The 

 process of writing develops it; the bud becomes 

 the leaf or flower; the one is disentangled from 

 the many and takes definite form and hue. I 

 remember that Thoreau says in a letter to a 

 friend after his return from a climb to the top 

 of Monadnock, that it is not till he gets home 

 that he really goes over the mountain; that is, 

 I suppose, sees what the climb meant to him 

 when he comes to write an account of it to his 

 friend. Every one's experience is probably 

 much the same; when we try to tell what we 

 saw and felt, even to our journals, we discover 

 more and deeper meanings in things than we 

 had suspected. 



The pleasure and value of every walk or 

 journey we take may be doubled to us by care- 

 fully noting down the impressions it makes 

 upon us. How nuich of the flavor of IMaine 

 birch I should have missed had I not compelled 

 that vague, unconscious being within me, who 

 absorbs so much, and says so little, to unbosom 



