the wind, or a copy of the ship's log-book. Suffice it to say, that we
arrived safely at Madras, after a voyage of about the usual number of
months and days, during all which I am sorry that I have not for your
entertainment any escape or imminent danger of shipwreck to relate; nor
even any description of a storm or a water-spout.

"You will, I am afraid, be much disappointed to find that, upon my
arrival in India, where doubtless you expected that I should like others
have wonderful adventures, I began to live at Dr. Bell's asylum in
Madras a quiet regular life; in which for years I may safely say, that
every day in the week was extremely like that which preceded it. This
regularity was nowise irksome to me, notwithstanding that I had for some
years, in England, been so much used to a roving way of life. I had
never any taste for rambling; and under Dr. Bell, who treated me with
strict justice, as far as the business of the asylum was concerned, and
with distinguished kindness in all other circumstances, I enjoyed as
much freedom as I desired. I never had those absurd vague notions of
liberty, which render men uneasy under the necessary restraints of all
civilized society, and which do not make them the more fit to live
with savages. The young people who were under my care gradually became
attached to me, and I to them. I obeyed Dr. Bell's directions exactly
in all things; and he was pleased to say, after I had been with him for
some time, that he never had any assistant who was so entirely agreeable
to him. When the business of the day was over, I often amused myself,
and the elder boys, with my apparatus for preparing the gases, my
speaking-trumpet, air-gun, &c.

"One day, I think it was in the fourth year of my residence at Madras,
Dr. Bell sent for me into his closet, and asked me if I had ever heard
of a scholar of his, of the name of William Smith, a youth of seventeen