I never could take to the Calcutta society, even if there were any, but there is not. Almost everybody who was here when we landed five months ago are gone either home or up the country. They come to Calcutta because they are on their way out to make their fortunes, or on their way home because they have made them, or because their healths require change of station, and they come here to ask for it. To-day was our _receiving_ day. We receive visits from eleven to one every Thursday morning, and out of seventy or eighty people there were few who were not new introductions. “Have you been here long?” “Only just landed from the _Marianne Webb_--a tiresome voyage.” “Did you suffer much at sea?” And so on. “Did you come in the same ship?” “No, we are just come from Lucknow.” And then there comes all the story about the hot winds up the country, and whether it is worse or better than Bengal. So tiresome! I rather like to see the new arrivals, if they do not put off calling for more than a week, as they arrive with a little pink colour in their cheeks which lasts nearly ten days, but I heard one of our visitors to-day, who has been in India twenty years, declare seriously that he hated that colour; he thought it looked unnatural and like a disease. I begin to see what he means. God bless you, dearest Theresa. I want to send this by _The Perfect_, and am so tired with our visits I cannot write any more. I hope you have written again and sent yours. I hoped to send you something pretty by this ship, but (it is not a mere _façon de parler_) in this rainy season there is not an item of any description to be bought in Calcutta. Nobody opens even the packages that arrive by mistake, as twenty-four hours spoils everything, but when the cold weather begins, they say that the merchants will have plenty of scarfs, silks, etc., from China and up the country. I want something Indian. We have written to China for any or everything, in the meantime. Your most affectionate E. E. _Miss Eden to ----._ GOVERNMENT HOUSE, _November 3, 1836_. Your last letter came to me by a Liverpool ship, so I think it right to write by the same conveyance, and the more so because our stock of London ships is low. Only one in the river, and she came only two days ago, and I suppose it will be six weeks before she will be well stocked with mosquitoes and cockroaches, and quite comfortable for passengers again. It is what is by courtesy called the “cold weather” now, and it is charming to see some of the old Indians wrapped up in rough white great-coats, rubbing their withered hands, and trying to look _blue_, not being aware that their orange skins turn brown when there is the least check of circulation. You have no idea what sallow figures we all are, and I mention it now because in another year I suppose the real Indian blindness will have come over me, and I shall believe we are all our natural colour.