134 
THOMAS J. COMBER. 
sion. His home-coming was naturally delayed 
by a visit to his sister Carrie at Victoria. 
Just before quitting Banana he penned the 
following lines to his old friend and pastor, Dr. 
Stanford : — 
“ Although I have many excuses to offer, yet I feel 
much ashamed at not writing to you for so long a 
time, especially as you have had sorrow upon sorrow 
during late years ; and if you have sometimes thought 
of your old boy, ^Tom Comber,’ you must have 
thought also that he was neglectful of one of his 
earliest and best of friends. But I do not think 
you will judge me too hardly. I can scarcely tell you 
how difficult letter writing has been to me in this 
still pioneer stage of the Congo Mission, in its 
extensive and difficult programme. As the senior 
of the Mission, very much correspondence with 
my brethren scattered over Congo Land has 
fallen upon me. My business correspondence with 
Congo brethren and with Castle Street finished, 
I have seldom had time to do more than write a 
few letters home to my father or brothers, and thus 
I have seemed very neglectful, I fear, of many old 
and dear friends. 
“ Believe me, my dear old pastor, I have felt full 
of sympathy for you time after time, as I have read 
paragraphs in ‘ Freeman ’ or ‘ Baptist,’ or heard from 
my father or the Rickards of the afflictions of body 
from which you have suffered. It grieves me much 
to think that when I come home, my old friend’s eyes 
(but not his heart) will be closed to me. I shall miss 
the look of kindly (and anxious) interest with which 
you received me upon my return to England six years 
ago. But I shall know none the less the interest is 
there, and that you lift up your heart constantly for 
me, and for such as me, in prayer that we may be 
kept earnest and true and holy, and that the promises 
of our gracious God, which you read at my farewell 
meeting eight years ago, may be fulfilled in me : ‘ I 
