Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/73

Rh sorts, but you will understand one's difficulty in getting into touch with such men on such occasions, when there can be little of the usual solemnity of Church worship, and none of the associations which belong to a concentrated building; I carry, of course, my usual robes, but otherwise one feels as if all the usual aids one has to one's work were absent, and it becomes a case of a man with men, face to face, at close quarters, accepted as such, and with a minimum of recognition of the official parson or priest.

On this particular occasion I got a useful hint. It happened thus: service and supper over, my host apologized for his inability to give me a bedroom. Would I mind sleeping in an outhouse, where I could have a stretcher? I soon made myself comfortable, and found that there was a partition wall which did not reach up to the open roof, the other part of the outhouse, a sort of saddle room, being occupied with men sleeping on shakedowns. Presently I heard voices: "I say, Jack, you got on all right, but I don't know your prayerbook, I warn't brought up to the Church." "But you could listen to the parson, I suppose?" "Yes, but what was that thing which he read last?" "That thing! Man, it was his sermon!" Ah, thought I, I must try and speak, and not merely read, and since then I have been schooling myself to do this, with more or less success. Certainly it seems to attract much better attention, but I find it much harder work than reading, and now and then no easy matter to keep one's presence of mind, as, for instance, lately, when a devout Wesleyan in the congregation, after his manner, suddenly said out loud, "No, no!" but fortunately for me, in another minute, "Yes, yes!" punctuating my statements all through