Letters from India Volume II/To the Hon and Rev Robert Eden 1
My dearest Robert,—Think of your overland letters of February 1, with papers of February 3, arriving to-day, April 12—only two months and a week. To be sure, that overland business is a lottery, but when it does come up a prize, it is worth all the hazard, but it takes quite a bewildering effect on one’s mind. We have had in the last five days letters by sea of September and October up to October 24. That is, in fact, where we have left off all the real and complete details of home. Then yesterday there came by a sailing vessel the overland letters of September, October, and November 24.
You cannot think how we rummage about the letters, and pick out a stitch here and put in a patch there, and bring dates and hints together, and make out a story of a life for you all. I dare say not at all the true one, but still it sounds so to us, and it does very well. Now you can’t do that for us; you can’t put the scenery to us, nor the right faces to the people just now. I have not been well for five days; supposed to have caught cold by sitting in front of a tattee—the first day of the tattees, and the bheesties wetted it so well, that I caught my death by it. Now you don’t see the scene, with the thatched windows and the black gentlemen without clothing splashing water all over them.