INDIA

Houses begun and never completed. The projected laundry.
Abandoned wells. Shunker sinks a well; he gets tired of it;
failure of his second well; begins again at his first well;
destructive blasting operations; finally gives up the plan.

The marks left of projects begun but never finished is a common and
discouraging sight in India. There is scarcely a village which does
not bear evidence of this. A man prepares to build a new house. You
are astonished at the large blocks of stone, neatly cut and well laid,
with which he commences. If you ask him about it, he will tell you of
the beautiful superstructure which is to come on the top of the plinth
which he is now building. But after a while the work begins to
slacken; the men employed gradually diminish in number. You ask the
cause, and various reasons will be assigned--scarcity of stone, lack
of water, and the like. Finally the work ceases, probably never to be
resumed. The owner has got tired of the project, or, not having
counted the cost, the treasury has run dry. Sometimes after a long
delay, he will build a miserable mud-house on the top of his handsome
stone plinth. But in innumerable villages you will find examples of
unfinished houses which have remained in that condition for
generations.

In Poona City there are conspicuous instances of the same thing.
Nearly all the better-class native houses are very substantially
framed in wood, the spaces within the frames being filled in with
bricks, set in either mud or mortar, according to the quality of the
house. The framework of a two-or three-storied house is often
completed, sometimes including the roof and tiling, before the
brickwork has been commenced. In different parts of the city may be
seen the framework of large and handsome houses which have never
advanced beyond that stage, and have remained for years
melancholy-looking skeletons.

Hindus often have projects which are purely castles in the air, and it
is difficult to know whether the projector is deceiving himself, or
whether it is merely in the spirit of boastfulness, that he speaks of
the great things that he is going to do. A middle-aged Brahmin called
at the Yerandawana Mission bungalow and said that he was going to
start a laundry on a large scale in the village. It was to be
thoroughly up to date. He was going to get the most modern machinery
from America. He would only accept as customers those who sent to the
wash