On the 11th of October, 1868, a royal proclamation of the new and auspicious reign was made in all parts of the vast kingdom and provinces of Siam, and a national holiday was appointed. The multitudinous pagoda bells rang all day, while louder still boomed the cannon, up went the rockets, and aloft streamed the red and white banners of the white elephant. Still higher rose the glad hearts of the princes and chiefs of the people, and low in reverential attitudes, even in the very dust, were bowed the heads of the millions of the enslaved subjects. Classed with the sod, and of as little account as the earth out of which they obtain so scanty a subsistence, branded as cattle with the mark of their owner, what have they to do with the glad shouts and the loud rejoicings that resound on every side? To them it means only a change of owners, and royalty is the name fixed to the other end of the enslaving rod of power: "The right divine of kings to govern wrong." There can be no auspicious reign or any happy future for the slave. [Illustration: KING OF SIAM.] The royal messages of peace and good-will may find an echo in the freedman's heart and in his home, but they must ever come with a darkening power and as a saddening cloud to the home and the heart of the slave. An irredeemable beast of burden, what has he to hope from an auspicious reign, or the enthronement of a promising sovereign? Yet that these millions of enslaved men and women are not brutes or wild beasts, or even devoid of noble and generous emotions, is proved by the most astonishing acts of devotion and self-sacrifice performed by slaves for the masters and mistresses whom they have learned to love. Any one who from curiosity or with a higher motive may visit the prisons in the city of Bangkok will find, to his great surprise, that nearly one half of the inmates are slaves voluntarily expiating the crimes and wrong-doings of their masters and mistresses, or, as is often the case, mothers, daughters, wives, or sisters enduring all the hardships of a Siamese prison--and words would fail me adequately to describe the amount of suffering which those two words imply--in the place and for the sake of sons, husbands, or unworthy relatives. The strength that is in these slaves to suffer is the strength of love. Love combined with despair gives them the awful and wonderful power of utter self-sacrifice. The rights which every man should enjoy in his wife, his children, and his own labor, and which should be the most sacred and inviolable rights, are here placed at the mercy of a master, and are oft-times to the slave the very fetters of his galling servitude.