Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/255

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
Letters from New Zealand
223

is given to the members, of material at wholesale prices, purchased by the society by means of general contributions for its work. It is succeeding well, because of its principle of not pauperizing by gifts, but of teaching self-reliance and self-help. Perhaps I should add that much depends on its good business management, which is in the hands of some of the most earnest and capable Churchwomen that any Vicar could have.

Sunday School work, too, is rapidly increasing, with good success. I am seldom absent from it, not teaching, but generally supervising the work, always taking myself the Morning School, as one large class. It certainly means work on a Sunday that one would gladly be free from, but I regard it as of all importance, especially as we can have no Church day schools; it brings one into personal contact with one's children, and with the teachers, to our great mutual advantage.

Of course, long continuance of such work begins to tell. It is now twenty-three years since I left London for Westland, and, save for the triennial meetings of General Synod, I have not had a single day's holiday. Our staff of clergy is too limited to allow for anything but an interchange of duty. There is no chance here of a month off work, with a locum tenens. So I am meditating a visit Homewards again, having the chance of someone to take charge of the parish for a year, a clergyman, recently arrived in our diocese, as Chaplain to the Bishop, the Rev. W. Winter. I have the consent of the Vestry, and I need hardly say I am looking forward keenly to the great pleasure of seeing the Old World again. Now that you have left your work at Eton, as Master, and are in your vicarage at Mapledurham, I shall hope to revisit you,