It was at this juncture that beautiful Arab pony Blitz came upon the scenes; the charming picture of him was given to me by Admiral Sir John Hext, who agreed with Lord Bill “he was one of the best that ever looked through a bridle.” Lord William sold Metal about this time for £500 to someone in Australia. During the Simla season he rode a good many races himself on Hardware, Nancy and Shamshad. He also won a match on Hakim against Mr. Laureston’s Prince Charlie, 2000 rupees a side. In July news reached Lord Bill of the death from heart disease of Mr. Fitch, who for some years had looked after and conducted the Calcutta lotteries, also acted as secretary to the Dehra Races. The poor man died in England while home for a holiday. Lord William felt much regret, for he had been closely associated with him, naturally, over racing matters. Mr. Fitch was another of the many men his lordship had befriended; in fact had been set on his feet and owed all his success in life to him. The season was jogging along much in the usual fashion, plunging from the sublime to the ridiculous and the ridiculous to the sublime all the time. In India we all become dual natured, whether it is the climate, the atmosphere we live in, or the desire to leave no time _to think_ I do not know; but we may in the morning be told, someone with whom we have been in daily touch is dead--we say how sad, open our letters, and make all our arrangements for the day’s amusements, which we fulfil, leaving just time to pay a last tribute to one whose hand we have so often held, whose voice and laughter is still sounding in our ears; we then hurry home from the cemetery and go out to dinner, or to the theatre, and home to bed late, hoping to be so tired that sleep will claim us immediately. It is not that we are callous really, far from it; the sad news in the morning has left a lonesome feeling in our hearts, an aching for the poor body who such a short time ago was full of all he or she were going to do when they went “home,” it makes home seem very far away and the present so full of prickling possibilities, and we feel we must laugh or cry, and our English objection to wearing our hearts on our sleeves makes us appear gay, and thus we are pitch-forked from the sublime to the ridiculous and vice versa, still if we never reached the sublime we should miss the picturesqueness. I once asked Lord Bill when we were speaking of this very matter, that is to say, the amount of feeling we contrived to hide in our everyday life, when he told me of several strange things that had happened in his life of which he had had strong pre-sentiments; one was in connection with racing, and the others purely private matters; this led me to ask him if he was superstitious; he replied, “I like to think I am not, but I am always very careful not to wound people’s susceptibilities on that point, having some of that feeling which is supposed to make us wondrous kind.”