’When I next reach Auckland, I suppose my eyes will rejoice at seeing your dear old likenesses.  When we build our permanent central school-house at Kohimarama, I shall try to get a little snuggery, and then furnish it with a few things comfortably; I shall then invest in a chest of drawers, as I dare say my clothes are getting tired of living in boxes since March 1855.

’I can hardly tell you how much I regret not knowing something about the treatment of simple surgical cases.  If when with W——­ I had studied the practical—­bled, drawn teeth, mixed medicines, rolled legs perpetually, it would have been worth something.  Surely I might have foreseen all this!  I really don’t know how to find the time or the opportunity for learning.  How true it is that men require to be trained for their particular work!  I am now just in a position to know what to learn were I once more in England.  Spend one day with old Fry (mason), another with John Venn (carpenter), and two every week at the Exeter hospital, and not look on and see others work—­ there’s the mischief, do it oneself.  Make a chair, a table, a box; fit everything; help in every part of making and furnishing a house, that is, a cottage.  Do enough of every part to be able to do the whole.  Begin by felling a tree; saw it into planks, mix the lime, see the right proportion of sand, &c., know how to choose a good lot of timber, fit handles for tools, &c.

’Many trades need not be attempted; but every missionary ought to be a carpenter, a mason, something of a butcher, and a good deal of a cook.  Suppose yourself without a servant, and nothing for dinner to-morrow but some potatoes in the barn, and a fowl running about in the yard.  That’s the kind of thing for a young fellow going into a new country to imagine to himself.  If a little knowledge of glazing could be added, it would be a grand thing, just enough to fit in panes to window-frames, which last, of course, he ought to make himself.  Much of this cannot be done for you.  I can buy window-frames in Auckland, and glass; but I can’t carry a man a thousand miles in my pocket to put that glass into these frames; and if it is done in New Zealand, ten to one it gets broken on the voyage; whereas, glass by itself will pack well.  Besides, a pane gets broken, and then I am in a nice fix.  To know how to tinker a bit is a good thing; else your only saucepan or tea-kettle may be lying by you useless for months.  In fact, if I had known all this before, I should be just ten times as useful as I am now.  If anyone you know thinks of emigrating or becoming a missionary, just let him remember this.’