we shall have received a little money to buy them with; but they say, in fact, we shall not see anything pretty till we go up the country. Nobody in Calcutta will look at anything that is not either French or English; but for the sake of example, I am already going to devote myself exclusively to Chinese silks and native jewelry whenever I want anything new. The prices here are too absurd: they charge entirely by the precedence of the house they go to, and the scale is very much, ten shillings at Government House for what is nine to members of Council, eight to the rest of the society, and so on, till a native gets the same article for one. It is very provoking, and utterly incurable.
I am sometimes quite fidgetty as to the bore that a large package may be to you. I wish you would tell me really what you think. You know you may always read the cover first, as that tells you the last day that we are all well, and then read the rest by degrees. It is the only thing I write with any zest, as the difficulty
