Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/115

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LETTERS FROM INDIA.
107

unusual for the time of year. George went to the opening of some medical college. It is the oddest thing, and shows what he was predestined for: but he never feels tired, and does not mind the heat, and the mosquitoes don’t bite him, and he goes on working away, filling all the hours fuller than they can hold, and sleeps like a top at night. It is curious!

To-night there was the concert, at which the natives came, besides all the same society that was at the ball. Fanny said there was nothing very splendid about the rajahs. I heard the music in my bedroom, and it did not sound ill. Our own band is a very good one, and plays every evening when we have company. The singers are a Madame St. Nesoni, immensely fat, with a cracked voice—she is their Pasta; there is a Pozzeni, very like Lablache; and a Mrs. Goodall-Atkinson, whom I remember as Miss Goodall, singing away at Drury Lane, but she is a good singer here; and they all ask their twenty guineas a night, as if they really were prima donnas.

We have done now with great fêtes for some time, I think till the hot season is over, six months hence. The climate is much more