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ELIZA IN EGYPT
71

power to remedy. Never intermeddling with their disputes, all endeavours to draw us into quarrels are vainly exerted. I despise them too much to be angry.

And the letter concludes with a moving picture of home life in the Red Sea:

After meals I generally retire to my cabin, where I find plenty of employment, having made up a dozen shirts for Mr. Fay out of some cloth I purchased to replace part of those stolen by the Arabs. Sometimes I read French or Italian and study Portuguese. I likewise prevailed on Mr. Fay to teach me shorthand, in consequence of the airs Mr. Hare gave himself because he was master of this art and had taught his sisters to correspond with him in it. The matter was very easily accomplished. In short, I have discovered abundant methods of making my time pass usefully and not disagreeably. How often, since in this situation, have I blessed God that He has been pleased to endow me with a mind capable of furnishing its own amusement, despite of all means used to discompose it.

Admirable too is the tone of the postscript:

I am in tolerable health and looking with a longing eye towards Bengal, from whence I trust my next will be dated. The climate seems likely to agree very well with me. I do not at all mind the heat, nor does it at all affect either my spirits or my appetite.—Your ever affectionate E. F.

She was to date her next not from Bengal but from prison. Here, however, her Alexandrian audience must really have the decency to retire. Eliza in chains is too terrible a theme. Let it suffice to say that though in chains she remained Eliza, and that Mrs. Tulloch was enchained too; and let those who would know more procure "The Original Letters from India of Mrs. Eliza Fay," published by the Calcutta Historical Society. The book contains a portrait of our heroine, which quite fills the cup of joy. She stands before us in the Oriental robes she detested so much, but she