This morning at one of the Catholic churches here the priest preached a most interesting sermon. Among other things he told the following story. He said, “The other day I met a man who said, ‘I am a better Catholic than you are; because I go to all the churches: the Catholic, the Anglican, the Presbyterian, etc.’” On the following Sunday the priest passed this same man as he was working in his garden, and he said to him, “You may go to all the churches, but you don’t obey the precepts of any of them; for they all tell you not to work on Sunday.” The man laughed. A few days after the priest met the man again in the town, and the man said to him: “I have just had the narrowest escape. I fell off a car and my legs were underneath it, and I was within an ace of being run over, when mercifully it stopped just in time.” “Well,” said the priest, “I think that was due to me, because, when I saw you working last Sunday, I prayed for the salvation of your legs.” _Roratonga and Tahiti: September_ I left Wellington on September 13 on the steamship Moana, one of the steamers belonging to the Union Steamship Company. There was a great deal of excitement at the send-off, because the Rugby Union Football Team from Australia were on board. They had come from Sydney and were on their way to San Francisco, in order to play against the local teams there. These football boys had arrived the day before, and had had a respite of twenty-four hours from the inclemency of the sea, which they had greatly enjoyed (the respite, I mean, not the sea). Some of them had never been away from Australia before. Several of them, or, indeed, nearly all of them with the exception of about seven, were indifferent sailors. They remained on shore as long as they possibly could, one of them climbing up the gangway as it was actually being pulled up. The ship sailed amidst cheering and singing. The southern Pacific, especially that part of it which is near New Zealand, is not a pleasant sea. The steamer pitched, and altogether the comfort of passengers was considerably interfered with during the first two days of the voyage. We started on Friday, and owing to the change of time we had two Saturdays running. (Let mathematicians explain that if they can.) It was not until the Sunday which followed the two Saturdays that the sea began to be smooth enough to allow the passengers to behave like human beings instead of like half-inanimate corpses. On Sunday most of the football boys emerged from their cabins and began training on the upper deck. They boxed, they wrestled, they ran, they played leap-frog, they formed scrimmages; in fact, they displayed every form of energy which human bones and muscles are capable of. The weather grew warmer, and on the Tuesday we got to the southeast trade winds. The day after this the steamer called at the island of Roratonga. Roratonga is an island which consists of sharp and jagged little hills entirely covered with a riotous green vegetation.