Then, after passing a house that is much more like a palace than anything we see in England, we come to a row of mud-thatched huts with wild, black-looking savages squatting in front of them, little black native children running up and down the cocoa-trees above the huts, and no one appearance of civilization that would lead one to guess any European had ever set foot on the land before. The next minute we may come to a palace again, or to a regiment of Sepoys in the highest state of discipline, or to a body burning on the river-shore, or another body floating down the river with vultures working away at it. Then, if George is with us, we may meet a crowd of white-muslined men who begin by knocking their heads against the ground, and then give their long petitions (asking for some impossibility) in the Hindustani language, or else an English petition, which is apparently a set of words copied from some dictionary. No sense whatever--otherwise an excellent petition. I have described our Calcutta house and household so often that I cannot do it again. It is all very magnificent, but I cannot endure our life there. We go there on Monday morning before breakfast. We have great dinners of 50 people, “fathers and mothers unknown,” to say nothing of themselves. Every Monday and Wednesday evening Fanny and I are at home to anybody who is on what is called the Government House List. What that is I cannot say; the Aides-de-Camp settle it between them, and if they are the clever young men I hope they are, they naturally place on it the ladies most agreeable to themselves. On Thursday morning we also receive any people who chance to notify themselves the day before. The visiting-time is from ten to one in the mornings, and we found it so fatiguing to have 100 or 120 people at that time of day that we have now chosen Tuesday evenings and Thursday mornings, and do not mean to be at home the rest of the week. There are schools to visit, and ceremonies half the week. Yesterday we had an examination at Government House of the Hindu College, and the great banqueting-hall was completely filled with natives of the higher class. Some of the boys in their gorgeous dresses looked very well, reciting and acting scenes from Shakespeare. It is one of the prettiest sights I have seen in Calcutta. On Thursday afternoon we always come here, and a prodigious pleasure it is. It feels something like home. It is sixteen miles from Calcutta, on the river-side. A beautiful fresh green park, a lovely flower-garden, a menagerie that has been neglected; but there is a foundation of a tiger and a leopard and two rhinoceros’, and we can without trouble throw in a few light monkeys and birds to these heavy articles. It is much cooler here, and we can step out in the evening and walk a few hundred yards undisturbed.