'My dear sir, just take it for granted; I never advance a fact I cannot prove. I am like the old woman in Westminster Abbey; if you interrupt me, I shall have to go back from George III. all the way to Edward the Confessor.' That silenced us all. You never saw such a thing as Solomon's Temple; not nearly so pretty as the bridges we used to build of those bricks. Mrs. ---- went fidgetting about with some bottles all the time, and began, 'Now, Doctor, show your method of instantaneous communication between London and Edinburgh.' 'Don't bore me, my dear, I have not time to prepare it.' 'There now, Doctor! I knew you would say that, so I have prepared it; there it all is, bottles, wire, galvanic wheels and all. Now, Miss Eden, is not he _much_ the cleverest man you ever saw?' So then he showed us that experiment, and a great many of his galvanic tricks were very amusing, but still he is so eccentric that I think it is a great shame he should be the only doctor of a large station. A lady sent for him to see her child in a fit, and he told her he would not give it any medicine on any account; 'it was possessed by the devil--a very curious case indeed.' He sent me a bit of the Gwalior North Pole in the evening, which was such a weight I thought I should have to hire a coolie to carry it, and I wanted the servants to bury it, but luckily C. was longing for one of these magnetic stones, and took it. To-day I have had a letter from him, with fruit and flowers which Mrs. ---- sent fifteen miles, and a jonquil in a blue glass, English and good, and a postscript to say that, though Solomon's Temple would build itself almost without any help, still, if I found any difficulty I was to write to him. I am quite sure I shall never find the slightest difficulty in it--it is all carefully deposited at the bottom of a camel trunk. CHAPTER XI. Futtygunge, Jan. 17, 1838. We have had a Sunday halt, and some bad roads, and one desperate long march. A great many of the men here have lived in the jungles for years, and their poor dear manners are utterly gone--jungled out of them. Luckily the band plays all through dinner, and drowns the conversation. The thing they all like best is the band, and it was an excellent idea, that of making it play from five to six. There was a lady yesterday in perfect ecstasies with the music. I believe she was the wife of an indigo planter in the neighbourhood, and I was rather longing to go and speak to her, as she probably had not met a countrywoman for many months; but then, you know, she might not have been his wife, or anybody's wife, or he might not be an indigo planter. In short, my dear Mrs. D., you know what a world it is--impossible to be too careful, &c.