The last day of February was that of the Installation.

Again Mrs. Abraham must speak:—­

’On Thursday last we had another happy day at Kohimarama, where Bishop Patteson was duly installed in the temporary chapel of St. Andrew’s College, as we hope to call it, after the church at Cocksmoor, in “The Daisy Chain.”  The morning was grey, and we feared rain would keep us ladies away, hut we made the venture with our willing squire, Mr. M——­, in the “Iris” boat to help us.  The pity was, that after all Lady Martin could not go, as she had an invalid among her Maori flock, whom she could not trust all day by herself.  The day lightened, and our sail was pleasant.

’The Primate and Missionary Bishop planted a Norfolk pine in the centre of the quadrangle—­“the tree planted by the water side,” &c.  The Bishop then robed and proceeded to chapel, and the Primate led the little service in which he spoke the words of installation, and the mew Bishop took the oath of allegiance to him.  The Veni Creator was sung, and the Primate’s blessing-given.  The island boys looked on from one transept, the “Iris” sailors from another, and Charlie stood beside me.  I am afraid his chief remembrance of the day is fixed upon Kanambat’s tiny boat and outrigger, which he sat in on the beach, and went on voyages, in which the owner waded by his side, and saw him (Kanambat) skim along the waves like a white butterfly.  We all dined in hall, after the boys, on roast beef and plum pudding, melons and water melons, and strolled about the place and beach at leisure, till it was time to sail back again.’

On the Sunday the new Bishop preached at St. Mary’s one of the sermons that broke from him when he was too much excited (if the word may be used) for his usual metaphysical style.  The subject was the promise of the Comforter, His eternal presence and anointing, and the need of intercessory prayer, for which the preacher besought earnestly, as one too young for his office, and needing to increase in the Holy Spirit more and more.  Very far were these from being unrealised words.  God’s grace had gone along with him, and had led him through every step and stage of his life, and so mastered his natural defects, that friends who only knew him in these years hear with incredulous indignation of those flaws he had conquered in his younger days.  ’Fearless as a man, tender as a woman, showing both the best sides of human nature,’ says one of the New Zealand friends who knew him best; ’always drawing out the good in all about him by force of sympathy, and not only taking care that nothing should be done by others that he would not do himself, but doing himself what he did not like to ask of them, and thinking that they excelled him.’  Humility, the effort of his life, was achieved at last the more truly because not consciously.

The letter to his father was again almost wholly on money matters; but at the end come two notable sentences:—­