Was very depressed all to-day. After pleasure comes reaction, and so I never get any invitation or go out for the day without thinking to myself that I will pay for it sooner or later. At piano, too, I could not get a grip of Mendelssohn’s Prelude. I can never get a real grip of anything, for immediately I get to know it, I stutter and stammer after playing it a few times quickly. Nannie only came for dinner [Only Nannie came for dinner?] as Fr. Engelmann has gone for the weekend to the Aran Islands with Mrs. Stockley, and Miss O’Brien is gone to Cappoquin. Worked fairly well all to-day. – Exchanged a few stamps with Lyle. I gave her a Palestine one, and on coming back from Arthur’s, where I went with Mám but Arthur was out, I found a note saying that I could keep my ‘charity stamp’. On the back of it Julia had written ‘Only a charity stamp’. I went over and showed her that charity stamps are postage stamps too by my catalogue. I hadn’t seen what Julia had written at all. Lyle was quite nice – it was only a joke. Before going to Arthur read life of St. Aloysius. It is the best possible thing to read a saint’s life now and then for it gives one example of how to imitate his extraordinary virtue even in a tiny way.
