How this itch for punning got into the residency I don’t know, but certain it is it did get there, and proved remarkably infectious. A good pun was a first-rate recommendation, indeed, at the residency table, to him who made it. “_Aquila non captat muscas_;” which means, “Great wits don’t condescend to make puns.” Granted, as a rule; but every rule has its exception, and the Resident of that day was himself, “an the truth be spoken, but little better than one of the wicked,” delighting to take the lead occasionally in this conversation-burking system, where a man lies in wait for his neighbour’s words, pounces on one that suits his purpose, murders, mangles, and distorts it without remorse. Occasional puns, if really good, give a poignancy to conversation—a tonquin-beanish sort of odour, which in moderation is very agreeable, but the excess of them is odious. I remember a few of the residency puns which I think may rank with some of the fairest on record. The Resident himself was once asked where he acquired his taste for punning; he replied, that “he thought he must have picked it up when travelling through the _Pun_jaub,” through which country he had accompanied a mission. A fisherman, to whom he had paid handsome wages to supply him with fish, absconded. “I always considered him a very _selfish_ man,” said the Resident. One of the gates of the palace is called the “Delhi Gate,” and in my time a subaltern’s guard was always stationed there. A young sub, on one occasion, at the residency table, I believe, asked a friend to take his turn of duty there. “Excuse me,” said his friend, “I can’t be your _delegate_ (Delhi Gate) to-day.” One observed that grain in one part of the city sold for so much. “Yes,” replied another, “but that is not the _aggregate_ (Agra Gate) price.” These samples may suffice. I soon began to discover the truth of the adjutant’s remark, that Colonel Bobbery was fond of “working the young hands;” for, what with morning and evening drills, parades, and attending guard-mountings, &c., I had little rest or enjoyment. The plain fact was, that I was bent on pleasure and hated duty, and the colonel, by giving me “excess on’t,” _i.e._ of the latter, seemed injudiciously determined to increase my dislike. The more I think on my early Indian career, and that of other youths, the more satisfied I am that the sudden transition from school to a state of independence is most injurious to the individual and his future happiness; detrimental to the interest of the state and that of the people we govern; and, in short, that school-boys are not fit to be masters of themselves or to command others. Nationally, we possess vast science and almost illimitable powers of destruction; and nationally, too, we are respected; but not so much so, I think, individually.