Page:McCosh, John - Advice to Officers in India (1856).djvu/74

 children they sent home fourteen years ago, that on first seeing they do not recognise; some parting with sick wives, others receiving wives whose plighted troth they had received ere they left their fatherland.

4. LETTERS OF INTRODUCTION.—In few things is the stranger more deceived than in the returns he receives for letters of introduction, or tickets for soup, as they are called. He will do well never to calculate on more results from them than a little formal civility—and at most a dinner; and where more than that is forthcoming, he should consider it as surplus gain. Nor can he be surprised that this is the case, considering how letters of introduction are usually got up; that they are mere attempts to transfer interest from one to another, through the influence of a third party, perhaps, unknown to the bearer, that like bills of exchange, they are often over-drawn,and when presented for acceptance, no assets are found. In fact, I consider most letters as dampers to genuine hospitality; the resident gives the stranger a good dinner as a thing almost imposed upon him without the gratification of thinking it a free gift; and the stranger receives it, not as a proof of any quality of his own having given rise to the compliment, but as a debt transferred to him by some other person, perhaps, only known by name.