The missionaries were eager to learn whether the new government was to be as progressive as the old, and especially to know the attitude to be assumed towards their work. Signs that progression was to be the order of the reign were not long wanting. Custom hitherto required that the coronation should be in the presence of the princes only. At the coronation of Chulalongkorn an innovation was introduced by invitations to the official representatives of other nations resident in Bangkok to attend. Shortly after the coronation the missionaries arranged, through the United States consul, to pay their respects to the new king. They were graciously received, and although the young king was suffering from effects of a fever contracted on the ill-fated astronomical expedition, he gave them an audience and conversed with them a few minutes. When the consul was arranging for his official visit of congratulations upon the vice-king, that personage requested as a personal favour that the consul be accompanied by Dr. House. The king was but fifteen years of age when he came to the throne, and during his minority the government was under the regency of Somdetch Chao Phya Boromaha Sri Suriwongse, an able and upright statesman. With rapid succession came decrees changing age-long customs and bringing Siamese social and civil institutions into line with Western civilisation. The most radical and noteworthy of these changes were: the abolition of the practice of prostration by which everyone, of whatsoever rank, had been obliged to prostrate himself on the ground, face downwards, in the presence of any who had a superior rank in the social scale; the introduction at court and in the army of a modified European dress to cover the near-nudity which formerly prevailed; the prohibition of enslavement for debt, a pernicious custom by which parents could sell their children, husbands their wives, and anyone himself into servitude to discharge a ruinous debt, resulting in a state of peonage from which the hopeless victim could scarce escape; reformation of unjust political practises; and the initiation of a state system of schools, telegraphs and posts. Concerning two of these reforms interesting sidelights have been cast by writers. Mrs. Leonowens, by whom the prince had been tutored in English, relates that when he heard of the death of Abraham Lincoln he declared that “if he ever lived to reign over Siam he would reign over a free and not an enslaved nation, and that he would restore the ancient constitutional government and make Siam a kingdom of the free.” Mr. J. G. D. Campbell, in his volume _Siam in the Twentieth Century_, sketches the court-scene when the ancient custom of prostration was abolished: