Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/51

 Sunday, 11th. A Mr., a friend of Charles Elliot’s, dined with us yesterday. He and Mr. are both going back to Canton, where they are pent up in a place like Burlington Arcade, without the shops, and never see a woman from one year's end to the other. The consequence is that Mr. thinks Calcutta a perfect Paradise. He said seriously he could not imagine so gay or so happy a place. We played at ‘lottery,’ as we always do when we are by way of being alone, and they thought it delightful and agreed to make a great resource of it at Canton. It is a great triumph to ‘Mrs. Phillips’ that lottery tickets should have spread from her drawing-room, which was not bigger ‘than the summer breakfast parlour at Rosing’s’, to Canton by means of , and to Hyderabad by means of Colonel. He called the day before he went to join the Nizam to take leave, and in a quiet, confidential voice, said, ‘And about the prizes at lottery, which half of the pack do I take them from?’

We would not go to morning church; it is