Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/127



Camp, Delhi, February 16, 1839.

I sent you off a large book seven weeks ago, with the full expectation that by this time it would be crossing the line. I have just heard by chance that the man (the monster!) who took charge of it is still at Calcutta. That shows a depraved taste when he might be on his way to England, besides utter want of principle as to carrying books. I have nearly finished another, and shall send it off in a fortnight, on a fresh plot, and these are merely a few extraneous words to keep you quiet in the meantime—or rather unquiet—constantly writing. I say everything in those journals there is to be said, and have strong suspicions that they must be intensely tiresome and the sketches supremely ridiculous. I am driven into sketching figures because the country is so ugly, and I dare say their arms go where their legs ought to be; and now I am taking to colour them—I, who never handled a colour before—and I think I see you in fits of laughing over the result. generally sends in the figure