letter xvii.] TRIALS OF THE SISTERS. 169 



The Hawaiian women have no notions of virtue as we un- 

 derstand it, and if there is to be any future for this race it must 

 come through a higher morality. Consequently the removal of 

 these girls from evil and impure surroundings, the placing them 

 under the happiest influences in favour of purity and goodness, 

 the forming and fostering of industrious and housewifely habits, 

 and the raising them in their occupations and amusements 

 above those which are natural to their race, are in themselves 

 a noble, and in some degree, a hopeful work, but it admits of 

 neither pause nor relaxation. Those who carry it on are truly 

 I the lowest in the meanest task," for they have undertaken not 

 only the superintendence of menial work (so called), but the 

 work itself, in teaching by example and instruction the womanly 

 industries of home. They have no society, until lately no 

 regular Liturgical worship, and of necessity a very infrequent 

 celebration of the Holy Communion ; and they have under- 

 gone the trial which arose very naturally out of the ecclesi- 

 astical relations of the American missionaries, of being regarded 

 as enemies, or at least dangerous interlopers, by the excellent 

 men who had long resided on the islands as Christian teachers, 

 and with whose views on such matters as dress and recreation 

 their own are somewhat at variance. In the first instance, the 

 habit they wore, their designations, the presence of Miss Sellon, 

 the fame of whose Ritualistic tendencies had reached the 

 islands, and their manifest connection with a section of the 

 English Church which is regarded here with peculiar disfavour, 

 roused a strongly antagonistic feeling regarding their work and 

 the drift of their religious teaching. They are not connected 

 with the " Honolulu Mission." * 



I. L. B. 



* It gives me pleasure to add that the Sisters have lived down this very 

 natural distrust, and that in a subsequent residence of five months on the 

 islands, I only heard one opinion, and that of the most favourable kind, 

 regarding the Lahaina School, and the excellence and wisdom of the 

 manner in which it is conducted. I have been told by many who on most 

 points are quite out of sympathy with the Sisters, not only that their work 

 is recognized as a most valuable agency, but that their influence has come 

 to be regarded as among the chiefest of the blessings of Lahaina. 



