Rev. W. Benton 205 



repulsive and loathsome, but with that thought to guide us it is 

 nothing short of marvellous the affection you get to feel for 

 them all. 



" I don't think I should ever have known and felt this 

 beautiful pity and love for them had it not been for that great 

 ' Mission of Help ' which has been out here. I went on the 

 first night and then never missed. I seem to have lived my 

 whole life in the most intense ignorance of what is wanted and 

 required of us. I had a chat with the missioner, a Mr. Fitz- 

 gerald ; he is a very High Churchman and not at all like what we 

 generally fancy missioners to be. That chat led to others, and 

 now I feel a different being altogether." 



A great remorse seems to have seized him for the way he had 

 treated his people ; it suddenly came home to him how unkind 

 he had been to them. Now the home he had run away from was 

 remembered lovingly, and a great longing came to him to see 

 it and all appertaining to it again. Later in the same letter he 

 says : 



" I should indeed love to see the little cottage and the old 

 church again. Would you mind putting a bunch of flowers on 

 dear old Dad's and Mother's grave for me ? I should like to 

 think of them being there." 



He then expressed the wish for letters, the same longing 

 experienced by most exiles, letters from home. 



The relationship between stepmothers and stepchildren is 

 not always a happy one, but the affection between Dick Benton 

 and his stepmother was quite charming ; she thought the world 

 of him and he was devoted to her. 



The following letter gives some idea of this. 



"RoBBEN Island, 

 " Nr. Cape Town, 

 " Cape Colony, S. Africa. 



''February 1, 1905. 



" Your letter received this mail. You cannot think how 

 delighted I was. It was such a beautiful letter and I have read 

 it over many times. . . . You are a born comforter, and you 

 always have something nice and cheery to say to me. . . . You 

 ask me to tell you what I am doing. Well, at the time of writing 

 I am clerk in the works' department office of Robben Island. 



