Eternal God is my refuge. Now farewell; the Lord
make you a faithful steward." If we do not meet again in the
flesh, may we meet, never to part, before the throne of the
Great Redeemer!

I am your affectionate

D. CALCUTTA.

After my husband's consecration, he undertook a confirmation tour for
Bishop Wilson, at the mission stations around Calcutta. He also
consecrated a church at Midnapore in South Bengal. In December, after
four month's absence, he returned to Sarawak.

Our party in the mission-house during his absence consisted of a
chaplain, a missionary lady learning Malay and teaching the girls'
school, our young friend Mr. Grant, myself, and baby Mab. The days ran
along a smooth groove, although we had all plenty to do. Up early in the
morning, then a walk, and service in church at seven. After prayers some
hours' teaching and learning before midday bath and breakfast. The
afternoon was a more lazy time, though the hum of school went on
continuously, while we did our sewing and reading in the coolest corners
we could find. The new school-house, in which all the boys, the Stahls,
and Mr. Owen, the schoolmaster, lived, was near enough to the
mission-house for us to know the hour of the day by the lesson going on
at the time; for all the younger boys repeated their multiplication
tables in a loud voice together (in Malay), also their Chinese reading;
then came the singing, rounds and part-songs, the most popular lesson of
all. At four o'clock the school broke up. The children amused themselves
as English boys do. There was a season for marbles, for hop-scotch, for
tops, and for kites. Above all, do Chinese children love kites, and are
most ingenious in making them. They cut thin paper into the shapes of
birds, fish, or butterflies, and stretch it over thin slips of the spine
of the cocoa-nut leaf, then they ornament it with bits of red or blue
paper, and fasten it together with a pinch of boiled rice. The string is
the most expensive part, and two pennyworth lasts many kites, for they
are very frail affairs, and in that land of trees do not long escape
being caught, though they fly beautifully. Miss J---- had a cockatoo
which amused her and the little girls during sewing-class. He was a
beautiful bird with a rosy crest, but extremely mischievous. To sharpen
his beak he notched all the Venetian shutters in the verandahs; and if
he spied a looking-glass, flew at it in a rage and broke it: fortun