bears at one end a small earthenware stove with a supply of charcoal and water. At this end he cooks, to order, the various delicacies suspended from the other end of the pole. The water in the pot is drawn from the nearest canal or stagnant pool and is almost a meal in itself. For a farthing you may purchase a bowl of rice, which is warmed in the boiling water while you wait. Another farthing will provide you with a number of attendant luxuries in the form of very fiery pepper or very strong and unhealthy smelling vinegar. The basis of the curry may be frog or chicken, stale meat, fermented fish, decayed prawn, or one of a thousand articles of equally evil taste and pungent odour. Most things are either cooked or re-warmed for the purchaser by the simple plan of suspending them in a sieve inside the pot of boiling water. The same pot and the same water serve for all customers alike, so that the hundredth hungry individual gets for his farthing, not only all that he bargains for, but various tastes of the other delicacies that his predecessors at the counter have elected to buy. No charge is made for the use of the china basin which has not been washed since the last man used it, or for the loan of the leaden or earthenware spoons, or a couple of chopsticks. Neither the proprietor of this strolling restaurant nor the force of public opinion demand that these articles be used, and for many, fingers take the place of either chopsticks or spoons.

"Isa-kee! Isa-kee!" It is a queer sound when you hear it for the first time. A Chinaman comes staggering along the road, carrying two heavy pails at the ends of the usual bamboo pole. He bawls in long, loud, nasal tones, "Isa-kee! Isa-kee!" The man is wet with the perspiration that streams down his bare yellow body and soaks the cloth round his loins, that forms his only clothing. Presently, crowds of little boys, dressed in even less than the noisy vendor, collect round him and purchase with avidity the strange-looking mess denominated "isa-kee." He collects the coppers, and places them in a small leather purse, tied round his waist with a bit of string, there to lie in company with a little rank, black tobacco, or opium, until time will permit him to lose them in the maddening excitement of the gambling dens. "Isa-kee" is the vendor's reproduction of the English word "ice-cream", though there is little resemblance between the commodity he disposes of with such extraordinary rapidity, and the fashionable European delicacy whose name it has borrowed. A more truthful name and description of the article sold in the streets of Bangkok, would be "ice-mud." It is apparently a concoction of dirty water, half-frozen slush, and sugar. Being cold and sweet it is a favourite sweetmeat with the native children, and the ice-cream merchant may generally be found doing a roaring trade outside the different schools during playtime. When ice itself was first introduced to the Siamese by the European residents, they promptly coined for it the short and expressive name of "hard-water." It is amusing to hear the little ones exclaim as they swallow the frozen fluid, "Golly! How it burns!"

As far as the casual observer can judge, in this capital of Siam there are no Siamese engaged in any hard manual labour at all. There are of course, many Siamese employed in various kinds of domestic or official work, but in the streets nearly every workman is Chinese. There are nearly as many Chinese in the country as there are Siamese. They marry Siamese women, and their children make excellent subjects, as they possess both the natural brightness of the mother and the industry of the father. Unless they renounce their own nationality they are subject to a poll-tax of about five or six shillings, payable once every four years. At a date made known by proclamation, each Chinaman must present himself at the police-station and pay the tax. The receipt given is a small piece of bee's-wax about the size of a three-penny piece. This bears a seal, and is worn on the wrist for a certain time, fastened by a piece of string. The police are very busy at this time, as there is nothing the Siamese policeman so much enjoys as leading some unfortunate Chinaman to pay the tax. Should the seal be lost, the alien is bound to buy another as soon as he is requested by some officer of the law.

THE KEROSINE DEALER.

Carpenters, blacksmiths, butchers, bakers and scavengers are all Chinese. It is a Chinaman who sits all through the heat of the day, under a tent made of an old sheet supported by a central bamboo pole, displaying an array of strange-looking liquids, placed in thick glass tumblers in a long row. Great lumps of vermicelli float in the blue, green, red, or yellow liquids, presenting the appearance of curious anatomical specimens preserved in coloured spirits. It is a Chinaman who hawks about great pails of slimy, black jelly having the consistency and colour of blacking, but said to be extremely palatable with coarse brown sugar. The men who are watering the roads with wooden buckets fitted with long bamboo spouts; the men who sweep the roads, and mend them; the coolies in the wharves; the clerks in the offices; the servants in the hotels and houses: are all subjects of "The Lord of the Vermilion Pencil."

No Siamese pulls a rickshaw, though he frequently rides in one. The Chinese are the beasts of burden as far as the Bangkok rickshaw is concerned. This vehicle, as seen in Siam is a very sorry-looking object, bearing only a distant resemblance to those met with in every Eastern port from Colombo to Yokohama. Nowhere do you ever find such dilapidated rickety structures as those that the coolies pull through the streets of this city. A new one would be a veritable curiosity. When the rickshaws of Singapore and Hong-kong have reached a condition of extreme old age, and are so broken down that the authorities in those ports refuse to grant them licences any longer, they are sent on to Bangkok, where no licences are required. There the poorer classes use them freely, and there too are they as often used for the removal of household furniture, or the transportation of pigs, as they are for the carriage of passengers. The coolies tear through the streets, regardless of anyone's comfort or safety except their own; though, be it said, that they never resent the cut of a driver's whip when some coachman thus forcibly reminds them which is the right side of the road.

Pigs are not always allowed the luxury of riding in rickshaws. They are more usually transported in a far less comfortable fashion. Their two front feet are tied together, and then their hind feet are similarly fastened. A stout piece of wood is passed under the two loops thus formed, and the pig is carried by two men, each bearing one end of the pole. The animals generally object very strongly to this form of motion, and signify their disgust, and perhaps their pain, by the most heart-rending, ear-piercing shrieks. Thus another set of discordant sounds is added to the medley that roars from morning to night.

The rickshaw was borrowed from Japan; the "gharry" has been imported from India. It is a square box-like structure, the upper half being fitted with sliding windows similar to those in the door of a London four-wheeler. These windows, when open, admit of a free circulation of air, and they can easily be closed to keep out either rain, dust, or sun, at the will of the passenger. The sliding window-frames are always badly fitted, and they rattle and shake with such a terribly deafening noise, that two people