XXVI.
My dear St. John,
My time for retirement from work has come. You will understand this, knowing my age, and that I am acting under medical advice. Owing to the liberality of both the Diocese and my parishioners, I am able to retire with a good annuity, besides what is due to me from our Pension Fund. So I am not under the necessity, so hard on many, of remaining at work, to its detriment, when no longer able to do full justice to it. I know that it needs younger hands than mine. Who was it in old times that said, "One should put an interval between work and death?" It is a great privilege to be able to do that; a privilege which in future years will be possible for the clergy in New Zealand, if the system of our Pension Fund is carried out carefully.
After the completion of the church, and some months of work, I obtained leave of absence for a short visit to England, having secured as locum tenens the Rev. S. T. Adams, Rector of Coton, near Cambridge, who carried on the work of the parish with much success, aided by Mr. T. Curnow, my curate. Giving full notice of resignation, the Ven. Archdeacon Jacob, an Oxford man, was duly appointed as my successor. I am glad to say that the financial resources of the parish have prospered so well that my successor will have the aid
