’Of course it is useless to speculate on the future, but I see nothing at all to make it likely that I shall ever revisit England.  I can’t very well conceive any such state of things as would make it a duty to gratify my constant inclination.  And, my dear father, I don’t scruple to say (for you will understand me) that I am happier here than I should be in England, where, even though I were absent only a few months, I should bear about with me the constant weight of knowing that Melanesia was not provided for.  And, strange as it may seem, this has quite ceased to be a trial to me.  The effort of subduing the longing desire to see you is no longer a great one:  I feel that I am cheerful and bright, and light-hearted, and that I have really everything to make a man thankful and contented.

’And if you could see the thankful look of the Bishop, when he is again assured that there is no item of regret or desire to call me home on your part, you would feel, I know, that colonial work does require, especially, an unconditional unreserved surrender of a man to whatever he may find to do.’

But while admiring the noble spirit in which the son held fast his post, and the father forebore to unsettle him there, let not their example he used in the unkind and ignorant popular cry against the occasional return of colonial Bishops.  For, be it remembered, that dire necessity was not drawing Coleridge Patteson to demand pecuniary assistance round all the platforms of English towns.  The Eton, and the Australian and New Zealand Associations, supplemented by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel and his own family, relieved him from the need of having to maintain his Mission by such means.  All these letters are occupied with the arrangements for raising means for removing the Melanesian College to a less bleak situation, and it is impossible to read them without feeling what a difference it made to have a father who did not view giving to God’s work as robbing his family.

On the 13th of August, Patteson was on board, preparing for the voyage; very cold, and eager for the tropics.  The parting voice in his farewell letter is:  ’I think I see more fully that work, by the power of God’s Spirit, is the condition of us all in this world; tiny and insignificant as the greatest work of the greatest men is, in itself, yet the one talent is to be used.’

It was meant to be a farewell letter, but another followed in the leisure, while waiting for the Bishop to embark, with some strong (not to say fiery) opinions on the stern side of duty:—­

’I feel anxious to try to make some of the motives intelligible, upon which we colonial folk act sometimes.  First.  I think that we get a stronger sense of the necessity for dispensing with that kind of courtesy and good nature which sometimes interferes with duty than people do in England.

’So a man placed as I am (for example) really cannot oftentimes avoid letting it be seen that work must come first; and, by degrees, one sympathises less than one possibly should do with drones and idlers in the hive, and feels it wrong to assent to a scheme which lets a real work suffer for the sake of acquiescing in a conventional recognition of comfort, claims of society, &c.