share of work to get ready for me, and to read with me:  Greek Testament, 12 to 12.45, Greek and Latin from 2 to 3.  So all the lads are busy at out-door work from 10 to 12.45; and I assure you, under Mr. Pritt’s management, we begin to achieve considerable results in our farm and garden work.  We are already economising our expenditure greatly by keeping our own cows, for which we grow food (a good deal artificial), and baking our own bread.  We sell some of our butter, and have a grand supply of milk for our scholars, perhaps the very best kind of food for them.

’If we can manage to carry on a winter’s school here with some ten or twelve of the lads left under Mr. Pritt’s charge, while I go off with the rest, I really think that the industrial department may become something considerable.  It is an essential part of the system, for we must begin with teaching habits of order, punctuality, &c:, in respect of those things with which they have already some acquaintance.  No Melanesian can understand why he is to sit spelling away at a black board; and he is not like a child of four or five years old, he must be taught through his power of reasoning, and perceiving the meaning of things.  Secondly, we can gradually invest the more advanced scholars with responsible duties.  There are the head cooks in the various weeks, the heads of departments in garden work, &c., &c.  As these lads and men are being trained (we hope) to teach others, and as we want them to teach industry, decency, cleanliness, punctuality, to be, and to teach others to be honest, and careful, and thoughtful, so we find all these lessons are learnt more in the industrial work than in the mere book work, though that is not neglected.  Indeed school, in the restricted sense of the word, is going on for four or four and a half hours a day.

’The main difficulty remains, of retaining our hold upon boys.  Oh that I could live permanently in twenty islands at once!  But I can’t do so even in one; and all the letter-writing and accounts, and, worst of all, the necessity for being trustee for matters not a bit connected with Melanesia, because there is no one else, interferes sadly with my time.  I think I could work away with the languages, &c., and really do something with these fellows, but I never get a chance.  I never have two days together which I can spend exclusively at Melanesian work.  And I ought to have nothing whatever to distract me.  Twenty languages calling for arrangement and comparison causes confusion enough!’

These interruptions made the Kohimarama life trying.  ’As for correspondence,’ says the birthday despatch to Fanny, ’why this mail my letters to Victoria alone are twelve, let alone Sydney, Brisbane, Adelaide, Tasmania, New Zealand, and England.  Then three sermons a week, occasional services, reading up for a most difficult session of General Synod, with really innumerable interruptions from persons of all kinds.  Sometimes I do feel tempted to