o
bring Lucia very near, in spite of what the later generation is pleased
to call the stiltedness of the old-time verse.

Who will declare the merits of Lucia--dead in her spring before there
was even a _Hickey's Gazette_ to chronicle the amusements of Calcutta,
and publish, with scurrilous asterisks, the _liaisons_ of heads of
departments? What pot-bellied East Indiaman brought the "virtuous maid"
up the river, and did Lucia "make her bargain" as the cant of those
times went, on the first, second, or third day after her arrival? Or did
she, with the others of the batch, give a spinsters' ball as a last
trial--following the custom of the country? No. She was a fair Kentish
maiden, sent out, at a cost of five hundred pounds, English money, under
the captain's charge, to wed the man of her choice, and _he_ knew Clive
well, had had dealings with Omichand, and talked to men who had lived
through the terrible night in the Black Hole. He was a rich man, Lucia's
battered tomb proves it, and he gave Lucia all that her heart could
wish: a green-painted boat to take the air in on the river of evenings.
Coffree slave-boys who could play on the French horn, and even a very
elegant, neat coach with a genteel rutlan roof ornamented with flowers
very highly finished, ten best polished plate glasses, ornamented with a
few elegant medallions enriched with mother-o'-pearl, that she might
take her drive on the course as befitted a factor's wife. All these
things he gave her. And when the convoys came up the river, and the guns
thundered, and the servants of the Honourable the East India Company
drank to the king's health, be sure that Lucia before all the other
ladies in the Fort had her choice of the new stuffs from England and was
cordially hated in consequence. Tilly Kettle painted her picture a
little before she died, and the hot-blooded young writers did duel with
small swords in the fort ditch for the honour of piloting her through a
minuet at the Calcutta theatre or the Punch House. But Warren Hastings
danced with her instead, and the writers were confounded--every man of
them. She was a toast far up the river. And she walked in the evening on
the bastions of Fort William, and said, "La! I protest!" It was there
that she exchanged congratulations with all her friends on the 20th of
October, when those who were alive gathered together to felicitate
themselves on having come through another hot season; and the men--even
the sober fac