or write; but if they want me, I'll do my best." A short time afterwards, hearing that the Bishop was coming for a confirmation, he came to me and said, "Do you think the Bishop would take me? I can't learn much, as you know." When the Confirmation took place, he stood up with the rest, the large majority of them quite young, and made his profession of faith.
With such a man and others like him, St. Andrew's Church has become a centre of real Christian life and work; its congregation entirely of miners, some married, others single, who freely supply all the funds needed for its maintenance. I leave the finance as much as possible to them, finding that nothing so arouses the interest of laymen in Church work as responsibility for its maintenance. Occasionally they organize a social evening in their Town Hall, with a preliminary tea of good things, and then a concert, for which they can raise quite a good little orchestra of strings and wind, varied with songs, and occasionally a short lecture from myself.
Now for another sort of experience. Sent for suddenly by a messenger from the hospital, I found that a young woman had died there just before I could get across the river, the daughter of a farmer in the Nelson district, who had met with some mischance and left her home, drifting down to Hokitika, there taking refuge with some of that class of women who frequent Goldfield towns, but had only been with them a short time. At the cemetery, waiting for her funeral, the sexton said that he did not expect there would be any to follow her. It was a typical West Coast day of torrential rain, to add its own gloom to the sad end of such a young life. We saw, however, a number of women following, evidently some of her
