Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/251

 a man and woman, each with a dirty shred of cloth about it. The object in making images was that the spirits might accept them for their servants instead of the persons who offered them. The invisible spirits never carried off any of these dainty gifts, but I have seen sensible-looking dogs helping themselves freely to the rice and whatever else was eatable.

Some would take great pains to make perfect little models of a Chinese junk, painted gayly, and fit them out with little red and white banners, wax tapers, fruit and flowers. These boats contained as passengers clay images of men, women and children, and at dusk the tapers were lighted and the little vessels launched on the river as an offering to the spirits, to be borne away on the tide. Many charms were also used to keep off the evil spirits that bring disease. They consisted of strips of paper with various squares and marks upon them, sewed up in bits of red cloth or leather of a three-cornered shape.

But by far the most common practice as a preventive of cholera was wearing a few strands of cotton yarn about the neck or wrist. Go where you would, in the market or along the river-side, nearly all women and children wore this white string. I have been in the houses of noblemen where one had just been taken sick, when all the women of the family were busy dividing a hank of cotton yarn into portions and