Emily Eden

“ Though I am not doing any work myself—for I have taken to the carpentering and joining line and am having children’s toys made—it is just as troublesome drawing out plans as if I hammered and turned myself. ”

“ If you think that Dost Mahomed would be of any use at home as Prime Minister, in about a week we expect to have him and to be puzzled what to do with him, and we’ll send him to you. You don’t tell me half enough about your two out girls. They are doing just the bit of life which interests me beyond everything, the only violently happy bit in fact.
August 17. And now we’ve been fighting—taking a fort—just the thing you would have done with your yeomanry, only they never offered you a fort to take. The fort of Ghuznee is only five marches from Candahar, and is considered one. ”

“ We are expecting your July letters every day. I think you have been rather long without a government, for it is quite clear neither Whigs nor Tories are really governing. Why don’t you do as we do when things are at a standstill—go and take a city? ”

“ It is a horrid thing, which we none of us own publicly, but there is every reason to believe that his troops are quite as well disciplined as ours. When you get an unreformed ministry who will give you your yeomanry back again, let them wear steel helmets, black heron’s feathers, and flaming red turbans, and mount them on Persian horses. ”

“ They wounded her, and she wounded each of their elephants and disappeared; but they shot a cub, and she charged again and was killed. They found in her lair’ the remains of fourteen bodies and a hunting spear. The most horrid part of the story was that the screams of the poor boy, who was fourteen years old, had been heard by the villager for a whole hour after he was seized. The tigress had evidently given him to the cubs to play with. Such a death to die!
The deaths in this country from wild beasts are very numerous. ”