Page:Groves - Memoir of Anthony Norris Groves, 3rd edition.djvu/295



resumed his journal, addressed to the same friend, on board a little French brig, commanded by Captain M. T., of Bordeaux. He had chosen this mode of conveyance from Madras to Calcutta, because it was less expensive by half than the English vessel proposed to him by his friends, and offered him that freedom from society which he needed, after all the fatigue and excitement he had for so many months undergone. His experience proved the wisdom of his selection He found the captain very obliging, and everything very quiet; and though he could not help remarking the “mixture of niceness and filthiness to be found among the French, when you live with then,” he cheerfully submitted to it as one of the many little trials in which his self-denying course involved him; and after all, he says, “the Lord has blessed the voyage to the recovery of my health and spirits, so that I arrive at Calcutta happier than I have ever been since I reached India. May the Lord so help me,” he adds, with his usual panting after holiness, “that I may leave it holier than I enter it; I mean not as to my standing in Christ, but in conformity to His blessed will; that the fruits, which I hoped were preparing in the yet unopened bud in time of winter, may blossom in this time of spring, and come to perfection in some distant summer.”