In a recent message "Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar" <bosham@gmail.com> wrote: > Dear John, I'm full of a great serendipitous joy as I write this, because I > think I've quite unexpectedly reached the end of a long journey in search > of the origins of the legendary ''Peccavi'' quote, attributed to the hero of > the Scinde conquest - Napier. Do you remember we had discussed this > quite at length many moons ago and wondered about the 'truth' of this > 'apocryphal' story? I'm glad to report that I have now found out the source, > and present it to you as my Christmas gift. The only thing that remains now > is to find out the actual (or digitised) copy of the relevant issue of the > Punch. > [snip the rest] I knew that the entry requirements for cadets at the EICS college at Addiscombe contained "...must have acquired a competent knowledge of the English and Latin grammars." (V.C.P. Hodson, Officers of the Bengal Army 1758-1834 p. xxiv) and had read of the exchange of messages. However, I had not realised that the knowledge of latin was to enable 'coded' communication :-) -- Dave Barnett Keep GMT all year