CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
John Shore had even offered to sit up with him, but he answered he was better, and his mind quite easy.
"On Saturday night the doctors thought him better, and had recommended him to go home, either on the Boddington or Sugar Cane, Botany Bay ships, by which time they hoped to have him able to undertake the voyage, proposing first to salivate him. Early on Sunday morning the consomah ran over to Sir John Shore's, and said his master was mad, by which he understood he was delirious, and went there accompanied by Sir Robert Abercromby, the General. Just as they came to the premises another servant came out, and said that, since the consomah had left the house, Sir William had called for a dish of tea, drank it, and died! On their entrance they found him reclining on the couch, his head against his right hand, and the forefinger upwards towards the forehead, his usual attitude—his extremities were warm. Thus ended the mortal career of that truly great man Sir William Jones."
There is one sentence in the above extracts, penned as they were in a spirit of genuine admiration and manly grief, that strikes a jarring note to the modern ear. "His favourite slave-boy Otho," reads strangely, and it is hard to reconcile the master of the slave with the judge who, in one of his charges to the Calcutta Grand Jury,
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