The Henson Journals

[161]

Friday, November 14th, 1930.

Ella, Miss Headlam, and I motored to Durham, in order to attend the meeting of the Preventive and Rescue Association. It was held in Carter's Office in the North Bailey, a pleasant enough room save for the noise. Life in that street, once so sequestered, must be almost unendurable since the motor has arrived. In my deliberate judgment noise is the worst incident of modern urban life. We returned to Auckland after the meeting.

Dr McCullagh and I walked round the Park together during the afternoon.

I wrote a long letter to Welch in Nigeria, & sent him a copy of the Bishoprick. His last letter was certainly worth getting. It disclosed in the writer an intelligence & independence of mind combined with a rare faculty of seeing into a situation & disentangling the salient factors, which are exceptional. Perhaps there is a note of self–assertiveness, a consciousness of ability above the average, and an ambition which is not wholly spiritual, and these might make a student of human character anxious, but unquestionably the main impression made on my mind is that Welch is a very able fellow, far too able permanently to endure association with the obsolete fanaticism of C. M. S.

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