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 at least a dozen articles a week. The two or three-article man he should refuse. He had called, he said, to solicit the custom of the Boys' Home. We were able to give him, readily enough, a qualified promise of support, and from that day to this we have heard no more of the modern laundry. There is no more valuable asset in rural India than a good well. Hence many landowners begin to sink one. But with the propensity to begin and not to finish, there are multitudes of unfinished, and therefore useless, wells. There is a wide stretch of land between the Mission field at Yerandawana and the low range of hills on which the boys are so fond of rambling. It is only water which is wanted to make this tract productive. Dependent as it now is on the uncertain rainfall of the monsoon, an occasional and ragged crop, which often never comes into ear, is all that it ever produces. More often than not the farmers who own the property do not think it worth the labour and expense of cultivation. Two attempts have been made to sink wells, and both have been abandoned for years. In the case of one of these wells at least, water had actually been reached, and if they had gone down a little deeper there was every probability of an adequate supply. But abandoned schemes are hardly ever taken up again, and these two wells will remain unfinished to the end of time. A near neighbour, whom we will call Shunker, determined to sink a well. He discoursed to me at great length on the advantage of being independent of the canal water for the irrigation of his land. He also described the powerful pump, worked by a windmill, which would supersede the old-fashioned method of raising water by means of bullocks.