‘… I am now at Codrington College, where Mr. P[inder][184] the Principal, and his wife, have made me very comfortable indeed. I am quite ashamed to think how much trouble they have taken. I have two rooms about thirteen by fourteen each, twelve high; the sitting room looks out on the Atlantic, which is about half a mile off at the bottom of a very steep hill to which the Babbacombe[185] one is nothing. The view is very pretty: the foreground is the Principal’s garden, which is the most English thing in the West Indies, they say: then comes some very rough uncultivated ground, some part of which is quite parkish; and at the bottom a beautiful little bay which just now, while the wind is south, is as still as a millpond. ‘I give two Lectures a day, which is an amusement, and helps me to avoid thinking, which is ruination, I am sure. Some of the youngsters are very stupid, some passable, and one rather clever; so that the work is not monotonous. I have commons from the College kitchen very comfortably, and since I have had the ordering of my own dinner, I have entirely left off animal food. My dinner is a sort of slimy vegetable, the name of which I forget, but which tastes something like an oyster; and custard pudding, and a tumbler of water. At breakfast I eat two eggs, and put lots of butter to my bread; it is only lately that I have got over my dislike to Barbados butter. The first hour after daylight, I work myself with dumb-bells, which is very dull, but they say a good thing; and washing afterwards is a great treat. Also I sometimes undress in the middle of the day, and have a bout at the same dull occupation to get an appetite for dinner; and about half-past five in the evening I get an hour’s walk: so I am doing all I can for myself if nature will but help me, and if my patience will hold out. The disheartening thing is, that if I ate a beefsteak and drank a bottle of porter and six glasses of wine a day, I don’t believe my pulse would rise or my cough increase an atom. However, I hope to give this abstemious plan a fair trial; for unless it weakens me, which I have not yet found, it can do no harm.