other oriental languages.

There is comparatively little poverty in Calcutta, considering
the enormous population and the conditions in which they live.
There are, however, several hundred thousand people who would
starve to death upon their present incomes if they lived in the
United States or in any of the European countries, but there it
costs so little to sustain life and a penny goes so far that
what an American working man would call abject destitution is
an abundance. Give a Hindu a few farthings for food and a sheet
of white cotton for clothing and he will be comfortable and
contented.

The streets of Calcutta, except in a limited portion of the native
section of the city, are wide, well paved, watered and swept. There
is an electric tramway system with about twenty miles of track,
reaching the principal suburbs, railway stations and business
sections, and whether Moline (Ill.) got it from Calcutta or Calcutta
borrowed the idea from Moline, both cities use the same method
of laying the dust. The tramway company runs an electric tank
car up and down its tracks several times a day, throwing water
far enough to cover nearly the entire street. Other streets,
where there are no tracks, are sprinkled by coolies, who carry
upon their backs pig skins and goat skins filled with water and
squirt it upon the ground through one of the legs with a twist of
the wrist as ingenious and effective as the method used by Chinese
laundrymen in sprinkling clothes. No white man can do either. The
Hindu sprinkler is an artist in his line, and therefore to be
admired, because everybody who excels is worthy of admiration,
no matter what he is doing. The street sprinklers belong to the
very lowest caste; the same caste as the garbage collectors and
the coolies that mend the roads and sweep the sidewalks, but
they are stalwart fellows, much superior to the higher class
physically, and as they wear very little clothing everybody can
see their perfect anatomy and shapely outlines.

Much of the road mending in India is done by women. They seem
to be assigned to all the heavy and laborious jobs. They carry
mortar, and bricks and stone where new buildings are being erected;
they lay stone blocks in the pavements, hammer the concrete with
heavy iron pestles, and you can frequently see them walking along
the wayside with loads of lumber or timber carefully balanced on
their heads that would be heavy for a mule or an ox. Frequently
they car