rst settled in Yerandawana there was no collection
of letters at all. The English mail letters, which reached Bombay on
Friday, sometimes did not get to Yerandawana till the following
Wednesday. But the postal authorities readily grant facilities as soon
as there is a reasonable demand for them, and there is now a daily
delivery; also a morning and evening collection from a post-box hung
in the verandah of the Mission roadside dispensary.

Villagers at present make so little use of the postal service that
greater facilities than they have already got are not yet required.
Few rustics can write with sufficient ease to enable them to write a
letter, and a considerable proportion of the few letters which come to
our villagers are soon brought on to the Mission-house, or to the
schoolmaster, because the recipients cannot read them for themselves.

Almost all Indian correspondence is carried on by means of post cards.
It is the only country, perhaps, in which the post card may be said to
be a real success. In India it exactly supplied a want. The card is
cheap (it only costs 1/4d.), and it is complete in itself. Stamps and
envelopes have to be wetted. The gum may have been made of the hoofs
or bones of the cow, and the thought of possible defilement of caste
comes in. The post card has no drawback. Its publicity, which makes
English people dislike it, is not considered a disadvantage by the
Indian. He reads other people's letters as a matter of course, and
expects other people to read his. I have often seen a postman seated
by the street side sorting out his post cards, surrounded by an
interested little crowd. He and they are reading as many of the post
cards as there is time for, and no one appears conscious of
irregularity in the proceeding.

A post-office inspector who was travelling in the train with me told
me that they have great difficulty in checking robberies committed by
the Indian train-sorters, because effective supervision is impossible.
In the interval between station and station, which in some of the mail
trains is often an hour or two, the sorters know that they are secure
from interruption. They get skilled in detecting by the feel the
presence of a bank-note within an envelope. In a country where paper
currency is largely in vogue people often send money by post in the
form of notes in unregistered letters, trusting to the thin note not
being observed.

Many such notes get stolen by the train-sorters.