Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/233

 and reader, is fearful to think of. By the same ship, I have sent you the most frightful little commonplace netting-case you ever saw; in fact, it hardly is a netting-case, but the day we were packing up a box for England, they sent it here with other things for us to look at, and I, thinking of your purse-netting propensities, slipped it in.

Bengal produces nothing pretty; that’s clear! But I have now established a private correspondence with China, which I expect to produce great things. I have a private venture of my own, now, upon the ocean. If the articles should be contraband, it will give an added zest to the transaction. Those clever creatures, the Chinese, only send their worst manufactures out of the country, but now and then a Chinese captain abstracts some article that gives a great idea of the treasures which might be procured there. They make silks with embossed flowers in them, so stiff and grand they would sit up all alone on a chair. To appear in one of those silks would make all the Calcutta ladies fall down in separate fainting fits; because, being in Asia, they think it Rh