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 can get letters from China; they will be interesting when they do come, for they will tell us whether we are going to have a ten years’ war, or none at all.

At this moment we are booked for another year, which makes me sick at heart, but I do not look upon the case as desperate; it seems utterly impossible that the Whigs can stay in much longer.

August 6, I am going to finish this off to-day and put it up, which will mortify the Bombay Post Office pretty considerably, I expect; they will find it rather difficult to say that my letter arrived too late.

Yesterday at dinner I sat next to Colonel ; you know Colonel of course. As far as I can make out, he has been for the last eighty-seven years and odd minutes at Siam, so you must have been constantly moving in the same circle; and, what is really interesting, he has seen a great deal of the father and mother of the ‘Siamese Twins,’ who are now showing themselves in America, and who send their father and mother 60l. a year, and they intend soon to go home and retire upon their earnings.