especially in Banks Islanders, with a very great reserve about anything that touches the feelings or concerns character.  Thus a boy, who would use the Bishop’s room as if it were his own, coming in unasked, to read or write, or sit by the fire there, would with very great difficulty get over the physical trembling, which their language implies, that would come upon him, if he wished to speak about his own feelings on religious matters, or to tell him something which he well knew it was his duty to make known.  When one knows how difficult it is to them to speak openly, their openness with the Bishop is more appreciated, though he indeed often enough complained of their closeness with him.  The real affection between the boys and the Bishop required no acquaintance with the character of either to discern, and could surprise no one who knew anything of the history of their relation one to another.  It is well known that he wished his elder boys to stand in the place of the sixth form of a public school; and to some extent they did so, but being mostly Banks Islanders, and Banks Islanders being peculiarly afraid of interfering with one another, his idea was never reached.  Still no doubt a good deal is attained when they arrive rather at the position of pupil-teacher in a National School; and this at least they occupy very satisfactorily, as is shown by the success with which so large a school has been carried on since the Bishop’s death.  No doubt the Ordination of more from among their number would go far to raise them in their own estimation.

’In truth, the carrying out of the principle of the equality of black and white in a missionary work, which is the principle of this mission, is very difficult, and cannot be done in all particulars in practice by anyone, and by most people, unless brought up to it, probably not at all.  Nevertheless, it is practicable, and, as we think, essential, and was in all main points carried out by Bishop Patteson.  But the effect of this must not be exaggerated.  It is true that we have no servants, yet a boy regularly brought water, &c., for the Bishop, and a woman regularly swept and cleaned his rooms, and received regular wages for it.  The Bishop never cooked his dinner or did any such work except upon occasions on which a bachelor curate in England does much of the kind, as a matter of course.  The extraordinary thing is that it is, as he at any rate supposed, the custom in other missions to make scholars and converts servants as a matter of course; and the difference lies not in the work which is done or not done by the one party or the other, but in the social relation of equality which subsists between them, and the spirit in which the work is asked for and rendered.

’The main thing to notice about the Bishop is that there was nothing forced or unnatural in his manner of taking a position of equality, and equality as real in any way as his superiority in another.  Consequently, there was never the least loss of dignity or authority on his part.