Mickie Takes a Spell
In the April issue of The Far East magazine we ran articles on Mickie Daly's Diary. Here is another excerpt from 1935.
Mickie Daly replies to a ‘letter' from a Chinese girl, Lucy Chan from Hanyang.
Dear Lucy Chan,
I never write to girls but I will make an eckcepshin in your case, because you are a Chinease. The convershin of your country is deer to the hart of the Holy Father and it is deer to the hart of Mickie Daly also - untherwise you would not get no letter from me, lucy Chan.
Do not think that your Sister Pawl is like our Sister Pawl. She is not. She could not be. It is an utter impossibility. Our Sister Pawl is uneek. There is no Sister like her in the world. You advize me to pray for her. I do. I know she is good and holey and a saint and I know she has me nearly a martir. Write and ask her over to Hanyang for a holiday. She needs a rest and so do we. It would do her good and we can spare her.
I remain
Your cinsere friend.
Mickie Daly
- Taken from The Far East, September 1, 1935, Page 32.
(Written in Mickie's own hand).
We received these letters from some of our readers in response to the April issue on Mickie Daly's Diary.
"Dear Fr Walker...
Thank you for the excerpt from Mickie Daly's Diary. It brought back many memories from primary school in the mid 40s, when our English lessons were to correct Mickie's mistakes. I have loved spelling ever since."
- Mrs D, Hornsby, NSW.
"Dear Father...
A year or so back my wife and I took up a subscription to The Far East and it was probably 50 years since either of us had read the journal.
We both made the same observation, "Mickie Daly's Diary has gone."
Last night I opened the April issue; we simultaneously made the same comment, ‘I wonder what happened to Mickie Daly?' Imagine our surprise when all was revealed on the first pages of the April issue... a real journey back into one of the characters we both remembered from childhood days when journals such as The Far East were in most Catholic homes.
Reading Mickie Daly as kids in the 50s neither of us guessed that shortly before Mickie Daly departed the pages of The Far East we would welcome into our lives our own little Mickie Daly, now a towering man in his 20s... but whose spelling was about on par with his famous literary namesake... it must have come with the name."
- Mr L Daly, Engadine, NSW.
"Dear Editor...
‘Mickie Daly's Diary.' Wow! What memories that brings back! Opening The Far East and seeing the heading in the Editorial, then again to read more of him on the following pages... like catching up, unexpectedly, with a long lost friend.
I was born in 1928, in Broken Hill. So many Irish priests in those early years, indeed, were in the post-war years, Irish priests and nuns. We moved to Adelaide and more Irish priests in my growing-up years. Things have changed now, some for the better, some for the worst, but Mickie Daly has surfaced again.
So the world isn't such a bad place after all! Like Mickie, I always had trouble with spelling. Still do, so I had much in common with him. I seldom write a letter without my much-used, battered dictionary beside me."
- M.B, SA
