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 European art—idols covered with plate gold, solid silver vases of beautiful workmanship, golden candlesticks, marble statuary, ivory ornaments, clocks, garments studded with precious stones; crowning all, the beautiful emerald idol flashing with a molten mass of diamonds, sapphires and other gems. This cross-legged statue of Buddha, one foot high and eight inches wide at the knees, is of great value and antiquity.

The kings and nobles of Siam spend large sums on their temples and idols. There are between one and two hundred temples in the city of Bangkok alone. Several cost one hundred thousand dollars, and it is estimated that the Wat P'hra Keäu, with its lofty gilded roof, rich carvings, fine paintings and floor paved with diamond-shaped bricks of polished brass, cost nearly a million dollars.

Such expensive temples and monstrous images are built not only to impress and awe the people, but to make a large amount of merit. Tam boon, or "merit-making," is, after all, the sum and substance of Siamese Buddhism. The words are on the lips of young and old, rich and poor, almost every hour of the day. They are anxious to make all the merit possible, believing that their pilgrimage through the forms of animal life and the duration of their purgatorial existence in the several Buddhist hells is the result of Karma—i.e. merit and demerit. Speak