f more severe trials, frequently
become a source of disquiet, until habit has reconciled, or reflection
disposed the mind to receive the mixture of evil and good which is the
common lot of man in every situation of life. I might moralise on the duty
of intelligent beings suffering patiently those trials which human
ingenuity cannot avert, even if this world's happiness were the only
advantage to be gained; but when we reflect on the account we have to give
hereafter, for every thought, word, or action, I am induced to believe,
the well-regulated mind must view with dismay a retrospect of the past
murmurings of which it has been guilty. But I must bring into view the
trials of patience which our countrymen meet while in India, to those who
have neither witnessed nor [Transcriber's note: illegible] them; many of
them present slight, but living, op[Transcriber's note: illegible] those
evils with which the Egyptians were visited for their impiety to Heaven.

Frogs, for instance, harmless as these creatures are in their nature,
occasion no slight inconvenience to the inhabitants of India. They enter
their house in great numbers and, without much care, would make their way
to the beds, as they do to the chambers; the croaking during the rainy
season is almost deafening, particularly towards the evening and during
the night. Before the morning has well dawned, these creatures creep into
every open doorway, and throughout the day secrete themselves under the
edges of mattings and carpets, to the annoyance of those who have an
antipathy to these unsightly looking creatures.

The myriads of flies which fill the rooms, and try the patience of every
observer of nice order in an English establishment, may bear some likeness
to the plague which was inflicted on Pharaoh and his people, as a
punishment for their hardness of heart. The flies of India have a property
not common to those of Europe, but very similar to the green fly of Spain:
when bruised, they will raise a blister on the skin, and, I am told, are
frequently made use of by medical gentlemen as a substitute for the
Spanish fly.[1]

If but one wing or leg of a fly is by any accident dropped into the food
of an individual, and swallowed, the consequence is an immediate
irritation of the stomach, answering the purpose of a powerful emetic. At
meals the flies are a pest, which most people say they abhor, knowing the
consequences of an unlucky admission into the stomach of the