AUTHOR'S DEDICATION

MY DEAR SISTER,

Were any one to ask your countrymen in India what has been their
greatest source of pleasure while there, perhaps nine in ten would
say, the letters which they receive from their sisters at home.
These, of all things, perhaps, tend most to link our affections with
home by filling the landscapes, so dear to our recollections, with
ever varying groups of the family circles, among whom our infancy and
our boyhood have been passed; and among whom we still hope to spend
the winter of our days.

They have a very happy facility in making us familiar with the new
additions made from time to time to the _dramatis personae_ of these
scenes after we quit them, in the character of husbands, wives,
children, or friends; and, while thus contributing so much to our
happiness, they no doubt tend to make us better citizens of the
world, and servants of government, than we should otherwise be, for,
in our 'struggles through life in India', we have all, more or less,
an eye to the approbation of those circles which our kind sisters
represent--who may, therefore, be considered in the exalted light of
a valuable species of _unpaid magistracy_ to the Government of India.

No brother has ever had a kinder or better correspondent than I have
had in you, my dear sister; and it was the consciousness of having
left many of your valued letters unanswered, in the press of official
duties, that made me first think of devoting a part of my leisure to
you in these _Rambles and Recollections_, while on my way from the
banks of the Nerbudda river to the Himâlaya mountains, in search of