’But I greatly miss the intimate friend with whom to fix what I read by conversation and communication of mutual difficulties in understanding passages.  I don’t often forget points on which the Judge and I have had a talk, but what I read by myself I read too quickly, and forget.  I want to fix it by subsequent discussion and enquiry with a competent friend.  If I have intelligent young men to read with, that will almost do, it will easily help me to remember what I have read.  It won’t be suggestive, like the Judge’s conversation; yet if one tries to teach conscientiously one does learn a great deal.  I am puzzled as to books for my Norfolk Islanders.  I should like much the “Conversations on the Catechism.”  Are they published separately?  Shall I ask Miss Yonge to give me a copy?  And the “Plain Commentary” would be useful too, if (which I doubt) it is plain enough.’

’"Southern Cross:”  May 9, 1863.

’My dear Joan,—­You ask me about qualifications which a man had better possess for this Mission, so perhaps I had better ask you to enquire of cousin Derwent Coleridge and of Ernest Hawkins for letters written to them some six months ago in which (if I remember rightly) I succeeded as well as I am likely to do now in describing the class of men I should like some day to have.  I dare say they have not kept the letters, I forgot that, because although they took me some little time to write, they may have chucked them away naturally enough.  Still if they have them and can find them, it may be worth while for you to keep a copy by you to show to any person who wishes for information.

’It is not necessary at all that a man should have a taste for languages or a faculty of acquiring them.  What I want now is not a linguist, but a well-trained school-master of black boys and men, who will also put his hand to any kind of work—­a kindly, gentle, cheerful, earnest fellow, who will make light of all little inconveniences, such as necessarily attend sea life, &c., who is so much of a gentleman that he can afford to do any kind of work without being haunted by the silly thought that it “is beneath him,” “not his business.”  That is the fellow for me.  He would have to learn one language, the language of the particular class given over to him, and I think that a person of any moderate ability might soon do this with our teaching.  If I could get him to take an interest in the general science of language and to go into philological points, of course his work would be lighter, and he would have soon the advantage of knowing dialects cognate to that which he must know.  But that is not necessary.

’The real thing is to train a certain number of lads in habits of attention, punctuality, tidiness, &c., to teach them also upon a plan, which I should show him, to read and write.  The religious instruction I should take, and the closer investigation of the language too, unless he showed a capacity for going into the nicer points of structure, &c.