The fulcrum upon which the bishop depended in his efforts to heave the mass was St. John's College, and the college at this time was bringing troubles of its own. In 1847 it suffered a terrible visitation of typhoid fever. The bishop's own two little boys were stricken, and a son of Archdeacon W. Williams died. At one time no less than forty cases were calling for the attention of the staff. Through the care of the medical deacon, Dr. Purchas, the epidemic proved less deadly than had at one time seemed inevitable; but its appearance showed the unwisdom of combining a public hospital with an educational establishment. Even without this special plague, the daily routine was too rigorous to be maintained. English parents began to withdraw their sons from an institution in which Maoris so largely predominated; the Maoris could be kept at work only by constant supervision; the deacon schoolmasters, to whom the duty of superintendence was committed, were more eager to begin preaching than to perform thoroughly the humbler duties of the kitchen and the field. Those who were willing to do the humble work found that they had little time or energy left for intellectual pursuits. The ideal was not practical. More and more it became evident that the very continuance of the scheme depended upon the bishop himself. "Everything in the way of system," he wrote, "from the cleaning of a knife upwards, passes in some form or other through my mind." The result was "a turmoil of much serving, which had in it more of Martha than of Mary"; and he has to face the possibility of the failure of plans "conceived, it may be, in pride rather than in faith." But the communistic ideal still held the bishop's mind, and at one time (1848) there seemed a prospect of its realisation in an unexpected spot--the Chatham Islands. To this lonely field a Lutheran mission had come in 1846, and the bishop sailed thither with great hopes of bringing it into his system. He visited these German folk--five men and three women--and found them indeed "living in that simple and primitive way which is the true type of a missionary establishment. They seem to be as one family, and to have all things in common." At first, it looked as though their chief might consent to receive Holy Orders in the English Church; but the negotiation fell through, and the bishop left the house in sore vexation, being careful to wipe the dust of his feet on the doormat as he passed. However admirable may have been its constitution, this mission was never a success. Many churches were standing in the island at this time, but the native Christians were either Wesleyans, or they looked rather to far-distant Otaki than to the German community at their doors. [Illustration: ST. MATTHEW'S CHURCH, DUNEDIN.]