Laotians have their wine as well as more civilized nations, but they get it from a tree instead of a vine. A party of friends who were traveling near Lakon in returning from a walk in the environs encountered some Laotians carrying vessels of bamboo filled with a liquid which at first they supposed to be water. On tasting it, however, they discovered that it was the wine of the country, sweet-flavored and by no means disagreeable to the palate――not unlike, indeed, the product of some of the Rhenish vineyards. It was palm wine, freshly made. It will not keep more than four-and-twenty hours without fermentation. The Laotians offered to conduct the strangers to a neighboring plantation, where they might observe the different processes of its manufacture. The offer was accepted, and the party soon arrived at a clearing which was thickly planted with great borassus palms. To collect the wine――which is, in fact, the sap of the tree――nothing more is necessary than to make an incision in the middle of the head of the tree at the point where the leaves branch off, and suspend beneath a bamboo, into which the sap falls drop by drop. In order to reach the summit of these huge palms, which are straight and smooth as the mainmast of a ship, the Laotians have invented a simple and ingenious process. They transform the palm into a veritable ladder by attaching to the trunk, with small strips of flexible ratan, projecting laths of bamboo, which, jutting out to right and left at intervals of twelve to fourteen inches, form so many “rungs” and enable the ascent of the tree to be rapidly and easily accomplished. [Illustration: TAPPING THE BORASSUS PALM.] INCIDENTS OF MISSION-LIFE. There are bright gleams ever and anon revealing themselves in the pictures given us of the life of our missionaries in this lonely corner of the world, showing that God does not leave his servants here to sadness and discouragement. A young missionary thus describes a visit to the wife of the king of the province, by courtesy called a queen: