as young men and young women. The kone-*chook is in fact their "coming-out" festival.
Those whose poverty will not allow the expense of such an affair take their child when it arrives at the proper age to a Buddhist temple, and have a priest shave off the tuft with some simple religious ceremony.
If so much is made of this observance in the case of ordinary children, the celebration of the first hair-cutting of a young prince or princess, as may well be imagined, is a very grand affair. It is then styled a sokan. Preparations for it commence months beforehand; the governors of provinces far and near are summoned to be present; the highest priests in the kingdom are invited; and public festivities, with free theatres, shadow-plays, rope-dancing, etc., to amuse the immense crowds of people present, are kept up for many days.
If the child prince or princess is of the very highest rank, part of the ceremony takes place on an artificial mountain constructed in the court of the palace of strong timberwork and boards, covered so entirely with sheets of pewter gilded that it appears like a beautiful mountain of gold. The one erected a few years ago for the sokan of the eldest daughter of the reigning king—she being also a great grand-daughter of the ex-regent—the princess Sri Wililaxan, was sixty feet high (higher than a four-story building),
