The ordinary amusements with which, in the more settled parts of India, our countrymen beguile the rainy season, were wanting in a settlement that had only lately been reclaimed from the desert; in the immediate vicinity of which you still ran the chance of being "trod into the shape of half a crown by a wild elephant, or eaten by the tigers, which prefer this situation to the plains below for the same reason that takes so many Europeans to India; they encounter an uncongenial climate for the sake of what they can get." There were no books in the place except those that Macaulay had brought with him, among which, most luckily, was Clarissa Harlowe.

Aided by the rain outside, he soon talked his favourite romance into general favour.

The reader will consent to put up with one or two slight inaccuracies in order to have the story told by Thackeray.
"I spoke to him once about Clarissa.

'Not read Clarissa!' he cried out.
'If you have once read Clarissa, and are infected by it, you can't leave it.

When I was in India I passed one hot season in the Hills; and there were the Governor-General, and the Secretary of Government, and the Commander-in-Chief, and their wives.