Dear Mrs. Dare,[29]--Your letter arrived just in time to save you from some severe animadversions that were preparing for you. I intended to have sent by your young friend some remarks, direct and oblique, on the variableness of the sex, the facility with which promises are made and broken, the pleasures of indolence, and other topics of the like nature,--but your kind epistle disarms me. Soon after you left us, the heat increased to a degree I had never before felt, and made me often think of you with concern. I used to say to Colonel Bradshaw, 'I wonder how Mrs. Dare likes Gya, and its burning hills--I dare say she would be glad to be back again.' Well, I should be glad if we had you here again. I want female society, and among the ladies of Dinapore there is none with whom I have a chance of obtaining a patient hearing when speaking to them on the subject of their most important interest. This, you know, is the state of all but Mrs. Stuart, and it is a state of danger and death. Follow them no more, my dear friend: but now, in the solitude of Gya, learn those lessons of heavenly wisdom, that, when you are brought again into a larger society, you may not yield to the impulse of doing as others do, but, by a life of true seriousness, put them to shame. I go on much as usual, occupied all day, and laying a weary head on the pillow at night. My health, which you inquire after so kindly, is on the whole good; but I am daily reminded that it is a fragile frame I carry about. _August 23._--I rejoice to find by your letter that you are contented with your lot. Before the time of Horace, and since too, contentment has been observed to be a very rare thing on earth, and I know not how it is to be obtained but by learning in the school of the Gospel. 'I have _learned_,' said even St. Paul, 'in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.' To be a little slanderous for once, I suspect Colonel Bradshaw, our common friend, who will send you a letter by the same sepoy, must have a lecture or two more read to him in this science, as he is far from being perfect in it. He has, you know, all that heart can wish of this world's goods, and yet he is restless; sometimes the society is dull; at other times the blame is laid on the quarters, and he must go out of cantonments. To-day he is going to Gya, to-morrow on the river. Now, I tell him that he need not change his place, but his heart. Let him seek his happiness in God, and he will carry about a paradise in his own bosom. _The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for him, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose._