The kitchen floors are nearly all made of split bamboo, with great cracks between, through which they pour all the slops and push the scraps and bones, so that sweeping is unnecessary. Near the door are several large earthen jars for water, which are filled from the river by the women or servants. Here they wash their feet before they enter the house, and their hands and mouths before and after they eat, dipping the water with a gourd or cocoanut-shell. They use brass basins and trays a great deal, but for lack of scouring they are discolored and green with verdigris; and I cannot help thinking that the use of such vessels is one of the fruitful sources of the fearful sores and eruptions with which the whole nation is afflicted. [Illustration: SIAMESE LADIES DINING.] There are no washing- or ironing-days. Many wear no upper garment, only a waist-cloth, which they keep on when they go to bathe, and when they come up out of the water they change it for a dry one. It is then rubbed a little in the water, wrung out and spread in the sun to dry. If it is not stolen, they fold it up when it is dry and pat it with their hands, and that is all the ironing they do. The outer room of the house is barren enough, with perhaps a mat or ox-hide for guests to sit upon, and a tray from which all are served with betel and tobacco. It is considered a great insult not to offer betel to your guests, and a greater one still, I believe, to refuse it when offered. They think the red lips and black teeth it produces are very beautiful. They have a saying, “Any dog can have white teeth,” inferring that only human beings know how to blacken theirs. The bedroom is where things accumulate――old baskets and bags, rags, bundles and boxes. You seldom see idols in a Siamese house, but I have seen them sometimes in the bedroom, especially if any one is sick. There are no bedsteads, no tables, chairs, bureau, washstand, or indeed any of those things which we consider necessary. A torn straw mat or two, or perhaps an ox-hide on the floor, with a brick-shaped pillow stuffed with cotton or a brick itself or block of wood for a pillow, constitute the ordinary Siamese bed. In families not the very poorest you will find long narrow mattresses stuffed with tree-cotton. They may be covered with an old ragged waist-cloth instead of a sheet, and over them is suspended a mosquito curtain of dark-blue cloth or one of unbleached cotton. I have known these curtains to hang for years without ever being changed or washed. The beds and mats are filthy and swarming with bugs, which also infest the curtains, the coverings, the cracks in the floor and the wall, the boxes, and indeed all the rubbish in the room. I have seen them creeping over the people, and no one seems to mind them or think of being ashamed.