“All our anxiety here at present is the Indian mutiny.  We ourselves have great cause for trouble.  Our son (the only son I have, indeed) escaped from Delhi lately.  He is now at Meerut.  He and four or five other officers, four women, and a child escaped.  The men were obliged to drop the women a fearful height from the walls of the fort, amidst showers of bullets.  A round shot passed within a yard of my son, and one of the ladies had a bullet through her shoulder.  They were seven days and seven nights in the jungle, without money or meat, scarcely any clothes, no shoes.  They forded rivers, lay on the wet ground at night, lapped water from the puddles, and finally reached Meerut.  The lady (the mother of the three other ladies) had not her wound dressed, or seen, indeed, for upward of a week.  Their feet were full of thorns.  My son had nothing but a shirt, a pair of trousers, and a flannel waistcoat.  How they contrived to live I don’t know; I suppose from small gifts of rice, etc., from the natives.

“When I find any little thing now that disturbs my serenity, and which I might in former times have magnified into an evil, I think of what Europeans suffer from the vengeance of the Indians, and pass it by in quiet.

“I received Mr. Hillard’s epitaph on my dear kind friend Kenyon.  Thank him in my name for it.  There are some copies to be reserved of a lithograph now in progress (a portrait of Kenyon) for his American friends.  Should it be completed in time, Mr. Sumner will be asked to take them over.  I have put down your name for one of those who would wish to have this little memento of a good kind man....

“I shall never visit America, be assured, or the continent of Europe, or any distant region.  I have reached nearly to the length of my tether.  I have grown old and apathetic and stupid.  All I care for, in the way of personal enjoyment, is quiet, ease,—­to have nothing to do, nothing to think of.  My only glance is backward.  There is so little before me that I would rather not look that way.”

In a later letter he again speaks of his son and the war in India:—­

“My son is not in the list of killed and wounded, thank God!  He was before Delhi, having volunteered thither after his escape.  We trust that he is at present safe, but every mail is pregnant with bloody tidings, and we do not find ourselves yet in a position to rejoice securely.  What a terrible war this Indian war is!  Are all people of black blood cruel, cowardly, and treacherous?  If it were a case of great oppression on our part, I could understand and (almost) excuse it; but it is from the spoiled portion of the Hindostanees that the revengeful mutiny has arisen.  One thing is quite clear, that whatever luxury and refinement have done for our race (for I include Americans with English), they have not diminished the courage and endurance