’Then at 4.45 A.M.  I got up, a little later perhaps than usual.  Codrington and Brooke were very soon at work finishing the decorations in the Chapel; branches of Norfolk Island pines, divers evergreens, pomegranates and oleanders and lilies (in handfuls) and large snow-white arums; on the altar-table arums above, and below lilies and evergreens.  Oleanders and pomegranates marked the chancel arch.  The rugs looked very handsome, the whole floor at the east end is covered with a red baize or drugget to match the curtains.

’7 A.M., Holy Communion.  Six clergymen in surplices and fifteen other communicants.  At 10 A.M., a short, very bright, joyful service, the regular Morning Prayers, Psalms xcv. xix. cx. all chanted.  Proper Lessons, two Christmas hymns.

’Then games, cricket, prisoner’s base, running races.  Beef, pork, plum-puddings.

’Now we shall soon have evening Chapel, a great deal of singing, a few short words from me; then a happy, merry, innocent evening, native dances, coffee, biscuit, and snapdragons to finish with.

’If you had been here to-day, you would indeed have been filled with surprise and thankfulness and hope.  There is, I do think, a great deal to show that these scholars of ours so connect religion with all that is cheerful and happy.  There is nothing, as I think, sanctimonious about them.  They say, “We are so happy here!  How different from our lands!”

’And I think I can truly say that this is not from want of seriousness in those of an age to be serious.

’I pour this out to you in my happy day—­words of hope and joy and thankfulness!  But remember that I feel that all this should make me thoughtful as well as hopeful.  How can I say but what sorrow and trial may even now be on their way hither?  But I thank God, oh!  I do thank Him for his great love and mercy, and I do not think it wrong to give my feelings of joy some utterance.’

With this year the Eucharist was administered weekly, the Melanesians still attending fortnightly; but it proved to have been a true foreboding that a sorrow was on its way:-

’January 8th.—­A very joyful Christmas, but a sad Epiphany!

’U—–­, dearer to me than ever, has (I now hear from him) been putting himself in the way of temptation.  I had noticed that he was not like himself, and spoke to him and warned him.  I told him that if he wished to be married at once, I was quite willing to marry him; but he said they were too young, and yet he was always thinking of the young fiancee.  Alas! he had too often (as he says) put himself in the way of temptation with his eyes open, and he fell.  He was frightened, terrified, bewildered.

’Alas! it is our first great sorrow of the kind, for he was a Communicant of nearly three years’ standing.  Yet I have much comfort.