have foreseen all this! I really don't know how to find the time or
the opportunity for learning. How true it is that men require to be
trained for their particular work! I am now just in a position to
know what to learn were I once more in England. Spend one day with
old Fry (mason), another with John Venn (carpenter), and two every
week at the Exeter hospital, and not look on and see others work--
there's the mischief, do it oneself. Make a chair, a table, a box;
fit everything; help in every part of making and furnishing a house,
that is, a cottage. Do enough of every part to be able to do the
whole. Begin by felling a tree; saw it into planks, mix the lime,
see the right proportion of sand, &c., know how to choose a good lot
of timber, fit handles for tools, &c.

'Many trades need not be attempted; but every missionary ought to be
a carpenter, a mason, something of a butcher, and a good deal of a
cook. Suppose yourself without a servant, and nothing for dinner to-
morrow but some potatoes in the barn, and a fowl running about in the
yard. That's the kind of thing for a young fellow going into a new
country to imagine to himself. If a little knowledge of glazing
could be added, it would be a grand thing, just enough to fit in
panes to window-frames, which last, of course, he ought to make
himself. Much of this cannot be done for you. I can buy window-
frames in Auckland, and glass; but I can't carry a man a thousand
miles in my pocket to put that glass into these frames; and if it is
done in New Zealand, ten to one it gets broken on the voyage;
whereas, glass by itself will pack well. Besides, a pane gets
broken, and then I am in a nice fix. To know how to tinker a bit is
a good thing; else your only saucepan or tea-kettle may be lying by
you useless for months. In fact, if I had known all this before, I
should be just ten times as useful as I am now. If anyone you know