’You may suppose that as time approaches for Codrington and Bice to arrive, and for our move to Norfolk Island, I am somewhat anxious, and have very much to do.  Indeed, the Norfolk Island people do sadly want help.

’Your affectionate Brother.

’J.  C. P.

’P.  S.—­You may tell your boys at night school, if you think it well, that no Melanesian I ever had here would be so ungentlemanly as to throw stones or make a row when a lady was present.’

’St. Matthias Day, 1867.

’My dearest Joan and Fan,—­The beginning of the seventh year of my Bishop’s life!  How quickly the time has gone, and a good deal seems to have taken place, and yet (though some experience has been gained) but little sense have I of real improvement in my own self, of “pressing onwards,” and daily struggles against faults.  But for some persons it is dangerous to talk of such things, and I am such a person.  It would tend to make me unreal, and my words would be unreal, and soon my thoughts and life would become unreal too.  I am conscious of very, very much that is very wrong, and would astonish many of even those who know me best, but I must use this consciousness, and not talk about it any more.

’I am in harness again for English work.  How can I refuse?  I am writing now between two English services.

’Indeed, no adequate provision is made here for married clergymen with families; £300 a year is starvation at present prices.  Men can’t live on it; and who can work vigorously with the thought ever present to him, “When I die, what of my wife and family?” What is to be done?

’I solve the difficulty in Melanesian work by saying, “Use Melanesians.”  I tell people plainly, “I don’t want white men.”

’I sum it all up thus:  They cost about ten times as much as the Melanesian (literally), and but a very small proportion do the work as well.

’I was amused at some things in your December letters.  How things do unintentionally get exaggerated!  I went up into the tree-house by a very good ladder of bamboos and supple-jacks, quite as easily as one goes up the rigging of a ship, and my ten days at Bauro were spent among a people whose language I know, and where my life was as safe and everybody was as disposed to be friendly as if I had been in your house at Weston.  But, of course, it is all “missionary hardships and trials.”  I don’t mean that you talk in this way.

’Our first instalment of scholars with Messrs. Atkin and Brooke will go off (D.V.) about March 21.  Then my house is taken down; the boys who now live in it having been sent off:  and on the schooner’s return about April 15, another set of things, books, houses, &c.  Probably a third trip will be necessary, and then about May 5 or 6 I hope to go.  It will be somewhat trying at the end.  But I bargain for all this, which of course constitutes my hardest and most trying business.  The special Mission work, as most people would regard it, is as nothing in comparison.  Good-bye, and God bless you.