Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/180

 Thursday, June 24. We do not go up to Barrackpore this week, as the servants are busy preparing for the ball. has set up a small pony-carriage, and now the rain has made the unwatered roads passable, we find out very pretty drives through lanes and by-roads.

Calcutta is altogether (in the part of it inhabited by Europeans) very like the houses in St. John’s Wood; and the drives, barring their being utterly flat, are very pretty, when the weather allows of going off the watered road. We took a beautiful drive in the pony-carriage to-day, and came back by the Kidderpore School, where the orphan girls of Europeans are brought up; and when a tradesman or a noncommissioned officer wants a wife he goes there and chooses one. Formerly he used to choose after a single interview; but, I believe, now it is more delicately managed.

Friday, June 25. George and I drove to the salt-water lake, about four miles off, through some odd, wild-looking villages, and the lake itself looks like