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Title
Date(s)
- 28 January 1888 - 14 June 1889; 18 September 1894; 22 January 1901; 12 November 1912 (Creation)
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173pp
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Includes entry dated 18 September 1894 which reads: ‘I have read all diary up to this. It has done me good intellectually and spiritually. I see what kind of life I have led.…Worry, hoping, struggling, trying again, thinking, prayer, trying to be humble, wishing to be holy, compromising or compounding with obstacles, determined to avoid deliberate sin of all kinds with God’s grace,…much to endure mentally & bodily, feel responsibility of office very much, studying same books as well as matters connected with new duties. I suppose such will always be my life’ (1p.).
Also includes entry dated 22 January 1901 which reads, ‘I have read all diaries up to this.…I think I will begin keeping it again. Kept it up to about year ago I think pretty regularly. Life much the same. Health much better.…This is my sixth year as Superior at M(ill)town Park. Hopes it lasts.’
Also includes entry on last page dating to 12 November 1912 which reads ‘Have read D(iary) fr(om) beginning to here.…Had given up keeping diary for years, but last month began again though not on the same lines. My idea was to put down day by day what I had come to, what I thought, what I tried to be, to take stock of myself in all my bearings, as a kind of statement of what all my experiences had made me. I have written more in this kind of diary…since Oct. 1st than perhaps in a whole year of ordinary kind. I began with repugnance, I soon got some facility & even liking for such writing. I have never felt the joy that writers feel so often in using their steel pen, though I have written a good deal.…The eight years I was at Mungret 1903 – 1911 I taught Lat(in), Greek, English, most pass, a good deal honours too of English (I, II Arts) & all the University classes in Latin fr(om) Matric. to B.A. incl..…In the resumed diary I was putting down all about humility etc., etc., as if it were almost something new, a better way etc., & I find I’ve been always at it. But I really think I am better at it now, for I have learnt to recognise that I am all out-of-joint & therefore much better able to get on, feeling how infinitely better off I am than I deserve to be, how others better, how grateful I ought to be (& try to be) to be in God’s house, a member of the Society, how silly to find fault with what wise & holy men have appointed. Health all along much the same, discomfort, no positive pain, at times not easy to be patient or cheery with, but on the whole I am splendidly off here & dont wish ever to be elsewhere.…I think I may say I never was so well off & so peaceful & so come to anchor as I feel here & have felt since coming, but especially this second year & most since I took up D(iary) again.’
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