When I have least to do, then I take the longest time to do it. Yet I had a lot of free time to-day. Dr. Frend, a young Hungarian, studied in Vienna, and who is eminent as a doctor, was for tea. His English is killing, but he is charming. I must get to know him better. Went to Mr. Corkery. The music on the wireless was very second-rate. Mr. and Mrs. Breen and Mr. Brady were there – all semi-musical musicians. Mr. Breen ((Denis Breen was a primary school teacher, a Gaelic Leaguer, a lover of music and a professed atheist. He had provided the music for the theatre founded by Corkery, Terence MacSwiney and others. Frank O’Connor describes him in An Only Child (Ch 4, p 152-3) as loud, emotional, intense, dogmatic. He reports that Breen had no time for Cork’s German musicians, whose authority, like that of the clergy, he repudiated.)) is a very rough fellow. All day I read ‘My New Curate’, which Fr. Dalton gave me to read. I never enjoyed anything so much. It is so quiet, homely and humorous and at the same time has a great depth of philosophy. Canon Sheehan describes the peasants’ characters as an enigma, yet in his treatment he shows us their innermost lives and having read, we can understand this charming, simple, but sometimes paradoxical map. – Every time I read a good book, it gives me inspiration to be better from every point of view.
