Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian IslandsYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Religion
Life of John Coleridge Patteson : Missionary Bishop of the Melanesian Islands
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Missions -- Melanesia; Patteson, John Coleridge, 1827-1871
'You came to Lyttelton at the end of 1856 again, this time without him,
and the Bishop brought me up to St. John's College, and placed me under
him there. I remember at first how puzzled I felt as to what my position
was, and what I was expected to do. Not a single direction was given
me by Mr. Patteson, nor did he invite me to take a class in the
comparatively small Melanesian school. Gradually it dawned upon me that
I was purposely left there, and that I was expected to offer myself for
anything I could do. When I offered myself I was allowed to assist in
this and that, until at length I fell into my regular place. Although
the treatment I received in this respect puzzled me, I felt his great
kindness from the first. How bright he was in those days, and how
overflowing with spirits when among the Melanesians. What fun there used
to be of a morning, when he would come and hunt the lazy ones out of
bed, drive them down to the bath house, and there assist their ablutions
with a few basins of water thrown at them; and what an amount of quiet
"chaff" used to go on at breakfast time about it as we sat with them
in the great hall, without any of those restraints of the "high table"
which were introduced at dinner.
'During the first voyage made that year to return our Melanesian party,
I think Mr. Patteson was feeling very much out of sorts. I do not
remember any time during the years in which I was permitted to see so
much of him when he took things so easily. He spoke of himself as lazy,
and I confess I used to wonder somewhat how it was that he retired so
completely into the cabin, and did apparently so little in the way of
study. He read the "Heir of Redclyffe," and other books of light reading
in that voyage. I understood better afterwards what, raw youth as I
was at the time, puzzled me in one for whom I was already beginning
to entertain a feeling different from any previously experienced. That
seems to me now to have been quite a necessary pause in his life after
he had with wholeheartedness and full intention given himself to his
work, but before he had fully faced all its requirements and had learnt
to map out his whole time with separate toil.'
So concluded what may be called the first term of Coley Patteson's
tutorship of his island boys. His work is perhaps best summed up in this
sentence in a letter to me from Mrs. Abraham: 'Mr. Patteson's love for
them, and his facility in communicating with them in their own tongue,
make his dealing with the present set much more intimate and effective
than it has ever been before, and their affections towards him are drawn
out in a lively manner.'
CHAPTER VIII. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE AND LIFU. 1857-1859.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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