1868.1 CANADIAN BOYS. 299 



Mission for Christianity, and the Natural History for holidays ; 

 and let everything else go by default. If you came here you 

 would say, - How can you rest with all those thieves training, 

 and bad jail, etc., etc. : 7 but I calmly do nothing,* as even 

 w 7 riting a letter, or calling on a grandee, are just the things 

 over, that I cannot do. It's curious how one's old gifts go, one 

 after another : even playing the organ, or giving a teetotal 

 lecture, much more preaching, are really hard things now. 

 However, there is enough left to carry through ! The 1/^77 

 of the boys here is very different from the English type. Very 

 delicate skins and nervous temperaments ; great quickness in 

 whatever can be picked up ; but a high negative exponent for all 

 powers of thinking and steady working. Item, very little of 

 the attachment and affection element : f but remarkable ab- 

 sence of the sullen, obstinate, and other 6 narsty tempers ' that 

 abound in your muggy climate. My little set (considerably 

 improved by the eliminations that I don't hesitate to make) 

 are very good friends together : and plague each other in a very 

 good-humoured way." 



On Easter Sunday, he wrote birthday greetings to his sister 

 Susan, and told her that he had had to play the organ at the 

 week-day Lent services. He found it positively difficult to get 

 the steam up again ! " However, it was a pleasure to play soft 

 Mass-music and fine tunes, and get out of the usual routine. 

 We use the Tune-book of the Hymns Ancient and Modern : 

 and I am obliged to confess that I should not relish the tunes 

 even of my own Tune-book again, as I used to. They sing in 

 quick chanting-time. One is an especial favourite, to 6 When 

 our heads are bowed with woe.' To-day (being 6 Damnation 

 Sunday'), we had our home service, a.m., and are going to 

 church in the evening. I always astonish the Episcopal folk by 



* In his next letter, urging her to come over, he says, " There is 

 everything to be done here for criminal children, adult convicts, sanitary, 

 temperance, etc., etc. I calmly sit by, and see it all, without doing more 

 than an infinitesimal ; simply because I can't. The school is all that I can 

 do properly : and in other respects this part of the world has to go on 

 much in the way that it will do when I am dead : a state of feeling hard 

 for Carpenters to learn ! " 



t As it afterwards proved, many had a deep attachment to him. 



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