breast, as did the scarfs, the other shoulder and arm being left bare. After these came various officials of the harem, and last the female police of the palace. Following the women of the palace were representatives of women of all the nations living in Siam and near it――Chinese, Japanese, Hindoo, Burmese, Laos, Cochin-Chinese, etc.――each in their national dress, the last in long blue silk coats with orange trousers. These were succeeded by the Siamese servants of the princess――hundreds of lively girls in bright scarfs; after them two white ponies were led by grooms. Then came the men-servants, many hundreds, in white jackets, and a regiment of Siamese soldiers formed the rear-guard. When the princess reached the pavilion where His Majesty sat, her bearers stopped, and she made homage to her royal father by raising her joined hands above her head. He, rising to receive her, lifted her to his side, and together they passed in to where a relay of priests were chanting prayers. After an hour or so, the princess, coming out, was escorted back to the gate of the inner palace, all going in the same order as that in which they came. These processions were repeated every afternoon for three days. On the fourth and great day the ceremonies commenced in the morning soon after daybreak, for so the Brahman astrologers had directed. The princess, borne in procession as usual, was taken to the great hall of the palace, and there, precisely at the lucky moment, the lock of hair about which all this ado was made was solemnly cut with scissors by the highest of the princes. Her head was then close shaved with gold, silver and steel razors. The candle of victory was now extinguished. Still clad in white, our little princess was next carried in procession to the foot of the golden mountain and seated on a marble bench in a pool representing the holy lake Anodad. Here the king took five jars――of gold, silver, brass, bronze and stone――and poured holy water over her. She shivered, and almost cried. But the great princes and princesses, and after them the chief of nobles, came up, and each in turn poured water over the poor child with trying deliberation for nearly half an hour. At last she was permitted to retire to a curtained pavilion near and exchange her drenched robes of white for the rich apparel of royalty. The prime minister and the minister of foreign affairs, gorgeously clad as angels, escorted her now up the golden mountain. At the summit an aged uncle of the king and her royal father himself received her. In the pretty temple there she was invested with a crown of solid gold, and then descended in full royal state covered with jewels, and was carried in procession thrice round the mountain, her right hand toward it.