like those two little fellows, and if the boat with bland-looking white men could quietly be pulled to the beach, and if I, in a respectable dress, could go to and from the boat and the shore, why the third stage of Mission work has been reached already!  I don’t suppose you can picture to yourselves the real state of things in this, and in many of these islands, and therefore the great difficulty there is in getting them out of their present social, or unsocial, state!

’To follow Christian teaching out in detail, to carry it out from the school into the hut, into the actual daily life of the dirty naked women, and still dirtier though not more naked children; to get the men really to abandon old ways from a sense of responsibility and duty and love to God, this of course comes very slowly.  I am writing very lazily, being indeed tired with heat and mosquitos.  The sun is very hot again to-day.  I have no thermometer here, but it feels as if it ought to be 90° in the shade.

’May 25th.—­George Sarawia spent yesterday here, and has just gone to his village.  He and I had a good deal of conversation.  I copied out for him the plan of teaching drawn up from books already printed in their language.  He speaks encouragingly, and is certainly recognised as one who is intended to be the teacher here.  No one is surprised that he should be treated by me in a very different way from anyone else, with a complete confidence and a mutual understanding of each other.  He is a thoroughly good, simple-minded fellow, and I hope, by God’s blessing, he may do much good.  He told me that B——­ wants to come with me again; but I cannot take him.  As we have been living properly, and for the sake of the head school and our character in the eyes of the people here, I cannot take him until he shows proof of a real desire to do his duty.  I am very sorry for it.  I have all the old feeling about him; and he is so quick and intelligent, but he allows himself again and again to be overcome by temptation, hard I dare say to withstand; but this conduct does disqualify him for being chosen to go with us.  I am leaving behind some good but dull boys, for I can’t make room as yet for them, and I must not take an ill-conducted fellow because he is quick and clever.  He has some sort of influence in the place from his quickness, and from his having acquired a good deal of riches while with us.  He says nothing, according to Sarawia, for or against our teaching.  Meanwhile, he lives much like a somewhat civilised native.  Poor fellow!  I sent a message to him by George that if he wished to see me, I should be very willing to have a talk with him.