“I was heartily amused, the first time I was called upon to perform on Aniwa! We had just unpacked the harmonium, one day, about a fortnight after our arrival. The news must have spread like wildfire; for, towards evening, about forty or fifty people came marching towards the Church (the house where we stayed till our new home was built), the foremost shouting in broken English, ‘Missi, make him bokis (= box) sing! Plenty man come hear you make him bokis sing!’ “I must not omit to tell you about my peculiar charge, and a very pleasant one it is, I mean my own Sewing Class. Nearly fifty women and girls attend pretty regularly every morning, except Wednesday and Saturday, and we spend two hours (often more) together sewing and singing. They are very tractable and willing to learn, having taken a great fancy for sewing. I never dreamt it would be really such delightful work teaching them, but my heart was drawn to them from the first, and I will always feel grateful to them for the kindly way they behaved to me when I landed amongst them, timid and rather frightened at feeling myself the only white woman on these lonely shores.... “Mr. Paton took the matter much more coolly, seeming to take for granted that they were all his ‘dear friends,’ though most of the men, really fine fellows we have since found them, thought it advisable to receive us with a good deal of impudence, trying how far we could be imposed upon! Plenty of them talk a little English, and really it was almost laughable to hear them telling the most monstrous lies with such a long innocent face, that one would suppose they believed them themselves, and then gravely adding, ‘That no gammon!’... “I feel the sewing, however, to be only a stepping-stone to something far more important. It brings me into contact with them so as to learn their language. I so long to be able to talk freely to them; but it is slow work with me! How the Apostles must have appreciated the gift of Tongues on the day of Pentecost! I wonder if it was accorded to their wives as well? It is so provoking, when you think you have mastered enough to venture on a little conversation with them, to see them looking at each other wonderingly. Some time ago, in talking to a girl, I plunged a little deeper than usual, thinking to astonish her with my wisdom, but she looked up innocently and told me she ‘did not savvy talk Biritania!’ I must have made awful blunders at first. But some of the women can talk Tannese as well as the men; and I got Mr. Paton’s help in any great difficulty, though he did not at all times enjoy the interruption, especially if the point in question turned out to be only about a needle and a thread, while he had been called away when setting up the type for our first Aniwan book!...