Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/190

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ist services, which are usually in Bali, and therefore not understood, or by the river-banks and wells when they go to fetch water.

Thus you see that housekeeping among the Siamese is very simple and primitive. There are no women who have worn out their lives in making and mending, baking and scrubbing, and fussing over a cook-stove. They do not dread the spring house-cleaning or the fall setting up of stoves and putting down of carpets. There is no Thanksgiving dinner to cook, nor Christmas holiday feasting, and no Fourth of July picnic; no preserving or pickling, no canning of fruits nor packing of butter nor pressing of cheese.

But, alas! there is no happy home-life either—no family altar, no pleasant social board where father, mother, sisters and brothers meet three times a day, and, thanking God for food, eat with joy and gladness and grow strong for his service; no sitting-room, where some of the happiest years of our lives are spent in loving companionship with those of our own household, no place for books, and no books to read, except perhaps a few vile tales or books of superstition and witchery.

May God pity Siam and plant in her kingdom many happy Christian homes! May her people be purified and cleansed, and taught of him in all things! Then, and not till then, will the good influences, working from the heart out-