often by myself, with a book.  After thinking of all kinds of things and persons, I think that my increased and increasing unwillingness to write is one proof of my not being so strong or vigorous.  I can’t tell you what an effort it is to me to write a business letter; and I almost dread a long effusion from anyone, because, though I like reading it, I have the thought of the labour of answering it in my mind.

’Then again, I who used to be so very talkative, am taciturn now.  Occasionally, I victimize some unfortunate with a flow of language about some point of divinity, or if I get a hearer on South Sea languages, I can bore him with much satisfaction to myself.  But I am so stupid about small talk.  I cannot make it.  When I have to try with some Norfolk Islander, e.g. it does weary me so!  Mind, I don’t despise it.  But instead of being a relaxation, it is of all things the hardest work to me.  I am very dull in that way, you know.  And sometimes I think people must take me to be sullen, for I never know how to keep the talk going.  Then if I do talk, I get upon some point that no one cares for, and bore everybody.  So here, too, I fall back on my own set of friends, who are most tolerant of my idiosyncrasies, and on my Melanesians who don’t notice them.

’Your loving Brother,

‘J.  C. P.’

In spite of this distaste for writing, a good many letters were sent forth during the early months of 1871, most of them the final ones to each correspondent.  The next, to Miss Mackenzie, is a reply to one in which, by Bishop Wilkinson’s desire, she had sought for counsel regarding the Zulu Mission, especially on questions that she knew by experience to be most difficult, i.e., of inculcating Christian modesty, and likewise on the qualifications of a native ministry:—­

’Norfolk Island:  Jan. 26, 1871.

’My dear Miss Mackenzie,—­In addition to a very long and interesting letter of yours, I have a letter from my sister, who has just seen you at Havant, so I must lose no more time in writing.

’First, let me say that I am as sure as I can be of anything that I have not registered, that I wrote to thank you for the prints long ago.  Indeed, all these many gifts of yours are specially valuable as having been once the property of your brother, of whom it seems presumptuous for me to speak, and as having actually been used in Mission work in so distant a part of the world.

’I need not say that “Thomas a Kempis,” his sextant, and his pedometer, are among my few real valuables.  For the use of the prints, I can’t say much on my own knowledge.  My classes are for the most part made up of lads and young men, teachers, or preparing for Confirmation or Holy Communion; one class, always of younger ones, being prepared for Baptism; and sometimes youths, newcomers, when we have to take in hand a new language.  Those prints are not of much use, therefore, to my special classes.  Most of them have passed beyond the stage of being taught by pictures, though they like to look at them.  But Mrs. Palmer has been using them constantly with the girls’ classes, and so with the less advanced classes throughout the school.