Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/182

 another Christian home adds its rays to the light which we hope will ere long cover Siam.

Many Siamese men have several wives at a time, but they do not marry all in the same way. They pay a sum of money for each, but often all ceremony is laid aside after the first marriage, save paying the money. They build a little house for each, or assign her a small suite of rooms in the mansion, if men of wealth and position. Polygamy is not so common among the lower as among the higher classes, because of inability to support more than one wife at a time; but a wife can be put away or left at will. Notwithstanding these evils, I have known many homes among the Siamese where the "heart of the husband safely trusted in the wife," and she, with loving confidence in him, "looked well to the ways of her household."