—If yon can manage to be at the New Zealand House by 11 o'clock on Friday next, I will meet you then and there. Perhaps you could then let me take home for consideration in quiet your sketch for the future, to which I will give the most earnest attention, for assuredly the present is intolerable and cannot last. In my opinion it is far better that the Company should stop, than hobble on as it has done lately, or rather acknowledge that real stoppage which is manifest to all behind the scenes.

Mr. Grodley will be here on the 11th January. He is already at work amongst his friends; and I look forward to early and great results from that move. I shall ask you to do me the favour of meeting him here for a day or two, with the view of establishing at once a cordial co-operation between you.

There are several things good to be done without delay which I shall be glad of an opportunity of mentioning to you alone on Friday. The most important of them concern the realization of your own views concerning the flax, and setting on foot a monthly line of packets. I believe that both objects may be accomplished immediately, by means of agreement between us before either topic is mentioned to the Directors. The dead Company may and must be brought to life again: or, if not, let us bury and have done with it.