Life of John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary Bishop the Melanesian Islands | Page 4

children fondly, but this
never interfered with good training and discipline. What she felt right,
she insisted on, at whatever pain to herself.'
She had to deal with strong characters. Coleridge, or Coley, to give him
the abbreviation by which he was known not only through childhood
but through life, was a fair little fellow, with bright deep-blue eyes,
inheriting much of his nature from her and her family, but not by any
means a model boy. He was, indeed, deeply and warmly affectionate,
but troublesome through outbreaks of will and temper, showing all the
ordinary instinct of trying how far the authorities for the time being will
endure resistance; sufficiently indolent of mind to use his excellent
abilities to save exertion of intellect; passionate to kicking and
screaming pitch, and at times showing the doggedness which is such a
trial of patience to the parent. To this Lady Patteson 'never yielded; the
thing was to be done, the point given up, the temper subdued, the
mother to be obeyed, and all this upon a principle sooner understood
than parents suppose.'
There were countless instances of the little boy's sharp, stormy gusts of

passion, and his mother's steady refusal to listen to his 'I will be good'
until she saw that he was really sorry for the scratch or pinch which he
had given, or the angry word he had spoken; and she never waited in
vain, for the sorrow was very real, and generally ended in 'Do you think
God can forgive me?' When Fanny's love of teasing had exasperated
Coley into stabbing her arm with a pencil, their mother had resolution
enough to decree that no provocation could excuse 'such unmanliness'
in a boy, and inflicted a whipping which cost the girl more tears than
her brother, who was full of the utmost grief a child could feel for the
offence. No fault was lightly passed over; not that punishment was
inflicted for every misdemeanour, but it was always noticed, and the
children were shown with grave gentleness where they were wrong; or
when there was a squabble among them, the mother's question, 'Who
will give up?' generally produced a chorus of 'I! I! I!' Withal 'mamma'
was the very life of all the fun, and play, and jokes, enjoying all with
spirits and merriment like the little ones' own, and delighting in the
exchange of caresses and tender epithets. Thus affection and generosity
grew up almost spontaneously towards one another and all the world.
On this disposition was grafted that which was the one leading
characteristic of Coley's life, namely, a reverent and religious spirit,
which seems from the first to have been at work, slowly and surely
subduing inherent defects, and raising him, step by step, from grace to
grace.
Five years old is in many cases an age of a good deal of thought. The
intelligence is free from the misapprehensions and misty perceptions of
infancy; the first course of physical experiments is over, freedom of
speech and motion have been attained, and yet there has not set in that
burst of animal growth and spirits that often seems to swamp the deeper
nature throughout boyhood. By this age Coley was able to read, and on
his birthday he received from his father the Bible which was used at his
consecration as Bishop twenty- seven years later.
He had an earnest wish to be a clergyman, because he thought saying
the Absolution to people must make them so happy, 'a belief he must
have gleaned from his Prayer-book for himself, since the doctrine was

not in those days made prominent.' The purpose was fostered by his
mother. 'She delighted in it, and encouraged it in him. No thought of a
family being to be made, and of Coley being the eldest son, ever
interfered for a moment. That he should be a good servant at God's altar
was to her above all price.'
Of course, however, this was without pressing the thought on him. He
grew on, with the purpose accepted but not discussed, except from time
to time a half-playful, half-grave reference to himself as a future
clergyman.
Reverence was strongly implanted in him. His old nurse (still his
sister's valued servant) remembers the little seven years old boy, after
saying his own prayers at her knee, standing opposite to his little
brother, admonishing him to attention with 'Think, Jemmy; think.' In
fact, devoutness seems to have been natural to him. It appears to have
been the first strongly traceable feature in him, and to have gradually
subdued his faults one by one.
Who can tell how far this was fostered by those old-fashioned habits of
strictness which it is the present habit to view as repellent? Every
morning, immediately after breakfast, Lady Patteson read the