For several months in the beginning of this year, after our teacher's departure, the school again devolved on me, and I was at home in it; but its labours being shared by my wife in the forenoon, and Miss Edgerley in the afternoon, were not too severe an addition to other duties. A new school-house, that we had some time previously completed the erection of, proved a great relief, being large and airy, though it would hardly see a larger or more prosperous school than the old one had done. That was the sixth school-house I had erected, as part of my missionary labours, beside three churches, and three dwellinghouses, in Jamaica and Calabar; and, I must say that, even though necessary, such labours are not what missionaries expect or are prepared for, and prove both uncongenial and secularizing.

The new school-house was erected just on the border of the mission ground, and at the head of the street which led up from the town, so that the children in school could see down the road. One day an Egbo official entered the school with a drawn sword, and ordered the children to shut the windows, as Egbo, he said, was coming from bush. He had no regard to Mr. Edgerley, and the latter resented his intrusion, and forbade the windows to be closed, saying that he could not teach school in the dark.