"Shaving the hair tuft of children is a great family festival, to which relations and friends are invited, to whom presents of cakes and fruits are sent. A musket-shot announces the event. Priests recite prayers, and wash the head of the young person, who is adorned with all the ornaments and jewels accessible to the parents. Music is played during the ceremony, which is performed by the nearest relatives; and congratulations are addressed, with gifts of silver, to the newly shorn. Sometimes the presents amount to large sums of money. Dramatic representations among the rich accompany the festivity, which in such case lasts for several days. [Illustration: BUILDING ERECTED AT FUNERAL OF SIAMESE OF HIGH RANK.] "Education begins with the shaving the tuft, and the boys are then sent to the pagodas to be instructed by the bonzes in reading and writing, and in the dogmas of religion. They give personal service in return for the education they receive. That education is worthless enough, but every Siamese is condemned to pass a portion of his life in the temple, which many of them never afterward quit. Hence, the enormous supply of an unproductive, idle, useless race. "When a Thaï (Siamese) is at the point of death the talapoins are sent for, who sprinkle lustral water upon the sufferer, recite passages which speak of the vanity of earthly things from their sacred books, and cry out, repeating the exclamation in the ears of the dying, 'Arahang! arahang!' (a mystical word implying the purity or exemption of Buddha from concupiscence). When the dying has heaved his last breath the whole family utter piercing cries, and address their lamentations to the departed: 'O father benefactor! why leave us? What have we done to offend you? Why depart alone? It was your own fault. Why did you eat the fruit that caused the dysentery? We foretold it; why did not you listen to us? O misery! O desolation! O inconstancy of human affairs!' And they fling themselves at the feet of the dead, weep, wail, kiss, utter a thousand tender reproaches, till grief has exhausted its lamentable expressions. The body is then washed and enveloped in white cloth; it is placed in a coffin covered with gilded paper, and decorated with tinsel flowers. A daïs is prepared, ornamented with the same materials as the coffin, but with wreaths of flowers and a number of wax-lights. After a day or two the coffin is removed, not through the door, but through an opening specially made in the wall; the coffin is escorted thrice round the house at full speed, in order that the dead, forgetting the way through which he has passed, may not return to molest the living. The coffin is then taken to a large barge, and placed on a platform, surmounted by the daïs, to the sound of melancholy music. The relations and friends, in small boats, accompany the barge to the temple where the body is to be burnt. Being arrived, the coffin is opened and delivered