A Diary of Innocence: Diary-Keeping
"It is Spring! It is Spring! I smell it in the violets. I smell it in the air...'' Thirteen-year-old Mary Hutchinson celebrates the arrival of the best of all seasons.
Monday, March 21st. Arose 8 a.m. It is Spring! It is Spring! I smell it in the violets. I smell it in the air. I feel it in my bones. It is everywhere. In the budding hedgerows. In the spring flowers. Let us get Spring in our hearts. I think Spring is my favourite season. When everything is made new. When there is a promise in everything. Ah! How beautiful is Spring. In the afternoon Mother and I went to see Mrs. Parker. We called at Mrs. Clayden’s and I took her some violets. We had a very pleasant walk. What a dear little old world kitchen Mrs. Parker’s is. Oh how peaceful and comfortable it is. We spent a pleasant time there. We had tea at Mrs. Clayden’s. Then we went home. I mended my stockings at night. I am trying to make a poem up. Had the gloom. Retired 9 p.m.
Think every morning when the sun peeps through
The dim leaf-latticed windows of the grove,
How jubilant the happy birds renew
Their old melodious madrigals of love!
And when you think of this, remember, too,
‘Tis always morning somewhere, and above
The wakening continents from shore to shore,
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
Longfellow
Tuesday, March 22nd. Arose 7.35 a.m. It is a nice but not bright morning. I mended my stockings and suspenders. I went for the milk. This is the verse Nellie has on the front of her diary. I write smaller now so I may get all this year in this diary book. I went for some violets and got quite a lot. The sweetness of some things is likened to that of violets, so what can violets be likened to? Everything is like itself. Everything has its own individuality. Just so we are all different from one another. Everything has beauty of its own. “Earth’s crammed with Heaven etc.” I was stung with a nettle today. Even a nettle is wonderful. What an ingenious way it has of protecting itself. In the afternoon I prodded and at night. Retired 9 p.m.
Wednesday, March 23rd. Arose 8.45 a.m. It is a bright day. But very peaceful. Alice went to Thirsk. I have mended my fountain pen. We intended going to Mrs. Scott’s but Mother had a headache, so we could not go. At night I sewed at my handkerchief. I finished it. It does look nice. Though self praise is no recommendation. Retired 9 p.m.
Thursday, March 24th. Arose 8 a.m. It is a fairly nice morning though not bright. I got such a lot of violets. Just after I got in a storm came on and it thundered and lightened and the rain came pouring down. I wish I had kept a diary in the past years. I find it so interesting. It is my hope that some day someone may find my simple daily record interesting or that someone may be helped and comforted by something I have written in its pages. I know the early pages are monotonous, for then I was new to the art of diary-keeping. Mother is busy baking. Mother and I went to Thirsk. We did some shopping then we called at Mrs. Scott’s. She was busy making butter. After tea I went for a walk with Alice. I found a bird’s nest of this year’s. What a thrill of pleasure ran up my spine when I discovered it. It is just a yard off the place where I discovered the first nest of the season last spring. It was a thrush’s. I wonder whether speckled eggs of nestlings rested under the faithful mother. For I did not look, lest I should disturb her. Retired 9 p.m.
Every day is a fresh beginning,
Every day is the world made new.
You who are weary of sorrow and sinning,
There is a beautiful hope for you,
A hope for me and a hope for you.
