simultaneously, "Let it be given to this or to some specific and
definite object." I think you will like to feel not only that the
money came most opportunely, but that within the walls built with
that money, many many hundreds, I trust, of these Melanesian
islanders will be fed and taught, and trained up in the knowledge and
fear of God....

'Your affectionate Cousin,

'J. C. PATTESON.'


Before the old year was out came the tidings of the death of good
Miss Neill, the governess whom Patteson had so faithfully loved from
early childhood, and whose years of suffering he had done his best to
cheer. 'At rest at last.' In the same letter, in answer to some
complaint from his sister of want of detail in the reports, he says:
'Am I trying to make my life commonplace? Well, really so it is more
or less to me. Things go on in a kind of routine. Two voyages a
year, five months in New Zealand, though certainly two-thirds of my
flock fresh every year. I suppose it still sounds strange to you
sometimes, and to others always, but they should try to think for
themselves about our circumstances.

'And you know, Fan, I can't write for the world at large anecdotes of
missionary life, and swell the number of the "Gems" and other trashy
books. If people who care to know, would think of what their own
intuition tells them of human nature, and history tells them of
heathenism, they can make out some notion of real missionary work.