Excerpt from Echoes From Old Calcutta: Being Chiefly Reminiscences of the Days of Warren, Hastings, Francis, and ImpeyDear, Dr. Busteed, It is with very sincere pleasure that I learn that yet another and a greatly enlarged edition of your fascinating "Echoes from Old Calcutta" is about to see the light, and, as the advanced copy which I have been privileged to see assures me, that it bears, in so striking a manner, the evidence of your inexhaustible knowledge and untiring erudition. Since first I read this book on my way out to India, I have never failed to find in its pages both a romance and an inspiration: a romance, because with the early days of British dominion in Bengal were interwoven the fortunes of famous men and women as remarkable for the. vicissitudes of their lives as for their talents - an inspiration, because your stimulating narrative must have tempted scores of others, as it tempted me, to explore those obscure but prolific strata of the past from which you have extracted so rich a spoil.Calcutta, frequently designated one of the most commonplace, is, in reality, one of the most interesting cities in the world, and it is not the less interesting because so many of those Europeans who have sojourned there have been only temporary residents whose local footprints have soon been covered up, but who trod the Asiatic stage in the heyday of their youth or ambitions, and then retired, perhaps to make greater reputation or to figure on a wider stage elsewhere. When we recall that, at the period which you have specially illumined, there were living in Calcutta within a space of twenty years characters so diverse or so conspicuous in different ways as Warren Hastings, Sir Philip Francis, Sir Elijah Impey, Rose Aylmer, the painter Zoffany, and the future Princess Talleyrand, one cannot but admit that the period and the place were equally worthy of commemoration.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.