ered the healthiest station in India,
for both Europeans and natives,[2] and I visited it in the latter end
of the cold, which is the healthiest, season of the year; yet the
European ladies were looking as if they had all come out of their
graves, and talking of the necessity of going off to the mountains to
renovate, as soon as the hot weather should set in. They had
literally been fagging themselves to death with gaiety, at this the
gayest and most delightful of all Indian stations, during the cold
months when they ought to have been laying in a store of strength to
carry them through the trying seasons of the hot winds and rains. Up
every night and all night at balls and suppers, they could never go
out to breathe the fresh air of the morning; and were looking
wretchedly ill, while the European soldiers from the barracks seemed
as fresh as if they had never left their native land. There is no
doubt that sitting up late at night is extremely prejudicial to the
health of Europeans in India.[3] I have never seen the European, male
or female, that could stand it long, however temperate in habits; and
an old friend of mine once told me that if he went to bed a little
exhilarated every night at ten o'clock, and took his ride in the
morning, he found himself much better than if he sat up till twelve
or one o'clock without drinking, and lay abed in the mornings. Almost
all the gay pleasures of India are enjoyed at night, and as ladies
here, as everywhere else in Christian societies, are the life and
soul of all good parties, as of all good novels, they often to oblige
others sit up late, much against their own inclinations, and even
their judgements, aware as they are that they are gradually sinking
under the undue exertions.

When I first came to India there were a few ladies of the old school
still much looked up to in Calcutta, and among the rest the
grandmother of the Earl of Liverpool, the old Begam Johnstone, then
between seventy and eighty years of age.[4] All these old ladies
prided themselves upon keeping up old usages. They use to dine in the
afternoon at four or five o'clock--take their airing after dinner in
their carriages; and from the time they returned till ten at night
their houses were lit up in their best style and thrown open for the
reception of visitors. All who were on visiting terms came at this
time, with any strangers whom they wished to introduce, and enjoyed
each other's society; there were music