Publisher's Synopsis
Helen Mackay's "Journal of Small Things," possesses the subtle charm of the diary in its highest form. Something of the intimate mood inspiring this record is expressed in the opening lines: "I have so strange a feeling, a sense of its being the end of things. The end of-I don't know what. I want to make note of things, not of the great things that are happening, but of the little things. I want to feel especially all the little everyday dear accustomed things, to take hold of the moods of them, and gather up their memories, to be put away and kept, and turned back to always afterward." It is easy to see, and remember, the big things; it is not until it is too late that we realize that the small details, the seemingly unessential, were the significant and precious things of bygone days. In these pages one follows the changes since l9l4-the first spectral rumors that penetrated the old chateau, the futile attempts to discredit the reports, the clinging to the old, secure serenity of peace. the bewildered abandonment of all that was familiar, the calm acceptance of the unrealities of war, the unconscious adjustments. This is the record of a spiritual development and it is by far the most impressive, the most poignant which this reviewer has yet found in the mass of war literature. It is a volume to be read and reread, and always to be kept near at hand.
-"The Dial," Vol. 63 [1917]
