Page:Letters from India Vol 2.pdf/62



Barrackpore, Friday, June 17.

I received your overland letter of April 2 on June 12, which makes us positive neighbours again—a mere trifle of time—and as there is an overland despatch going home on Monday, which will have the honour of conveying this, our communication will be unpleasantly quick. The pen with which, like Niobe, all ink, you last wrote will hardly be dry before you have to begin again. The only fault of these overland letters is that, by going about in that harum-scarum way, they rather spoil—not much but just a leetle—the merit of those plodding navigating epistles, which come in, in their proper course, and find themselves forestalled in most of their news. It tells, however, both ways. I can open all the letters that are to come, till they have worked up to April, without any horrible palpitation as to their containing any misfortune. We know generally that you were all alive and well on April, 2, and all the little details of March will be thankfully re-