They wear no jewels, these being used altogether by the children, their dress consisting only of a waist and breast cloth of dark silk. A little music, the dancing girls, actors, and tumblers, occasionally exhibited, chess, colouring their skin yellow with turmeric, and anointing the tuft of unshorn hair on the top of their head; scandal, with frequent dissensions, the natural consequence of a plurality of wives; no riding out, seldom paying visits, and rarely diverting themselves with shopping, the almost unvaried repetition, from day to day, of the same dull round of occupations and amusements, cause their lives to drag on wearily, heavily, and listlessly. Long nails being considered a sort of patent of nobility by the Siamese, as well as the Chinese and Cochin-Chinese, draw a certain line of distinction between the vulgar, who are obliged to wear short ones and work for their living, and the higher orders. Those of the latter are carefully preserved from being broken, but not quite so much pains being taken to keep them clean, they are generally disgusting in their appearance--some of them are full two inches in length, and are put into cases of bamboo or metal on retiring to rest. The female actresses wear silver-pointed cases to them, which curve backward with a high sweep, nearly touching the wrist. The higher orders of nobility, in fact, all who are allowed to crawl as far as the lowest place within the palace, and all the officers of state, must pay a morning and an evening visit to the “Lord of the White Elephant,” to his “_golden-footed majesty_,” “the master of all men’s lives.” Not to attend regularly, is considered a mark of disrespect and disaffection to the king: sickness, or some great calamity, only, is good cause for excuse. Regularly, at half past eight in the morning, the praklang passed the mission house, having about a dozen paddles to his long canoe, sitting cross-legged or sidewise under the palm-leaf awning, or reclining on a carpet and cushions, a slave crouching on all fours in front of him, administering to his comforts in lighting a cigar, or helping him to areca. His palanquin (or rather a lacquered hand-barrow) protected from the rays of the sun by a large umbrella, was carried in the same boat, so as to be in readiness, on landing, to carry his unwieldy person to the palace. About noon, he returned. Between six and seven, he again regularly passed, and returned again usually about midnight. The paddlers on the numerous boats crouched low when he passed, as they all do when passing by the king’s bathing-house on the river: he never notices, in the slightest degree, their obeisance, but wo to them if they omit it. The bath-house is of great length, painted red, and decorated in front with numerous dwarf-trees and shrubs, and is used, it is said, daily, by his hundreds of (some say, eight hundred) wives and many scores of children, with their countless attendants. [Sidenote: ANNUAL OATH OF ALLEGIANCE.]