The bedroom is where things accumulate—old baskets and bags, rags, bundles and boxes. You seldom see idols in a Siamese house, but I have seen them sometimes in the bedroom, especially if any one is sick. There are no bedsteads, no tables, chairs, bureau, washstand, or indeed any of those things which we consider necessary. A torn straw mat or two, or perhaps an ox-hide on the floor, with a brick-shaped pillow stuffed with cotton or a brick itself or block of wood for a pillow, constitute the ordinary Siamese bed.
In families not the very poorest you will find long narrow mattresses stuffed with tree-cotton. They may be covered with an old ragged waist-cloth instead of a sheet, and over them is suspended a mosquito curtain of dark-blue cloth or one of unbleached cotton. I have known these curtains to hang for years without ever being changed or washed. The beds and mats are filthy and swarming with bugs, which also infest the curtains, the coverings, the cracks in the floor and the wall, the boxes, and indeed all the rubbish in the room. I have seen them creeping over the people, and no one seems to mind them or think of being ashamed.
These rooms are never cleared out or swept or scrubbed. The cobwebs of succeeding years tangle and entangle themselves in the corners, drape the rafters and the windows, and indeed every place where the busy spinners can do their work. There is seldom more than one window in a bedroom, and at night it is carefully closed, and if it were not for the cracks in the floor and walls the miserable inmates would surely smother. They do not bring their cattle into the house, for it is very frail and set upon poles about six feet from the ground, but they do keep them under the house, so that they can hear if thieves come to steal them.
They never give any dinner- or tea-parties or visit each other, as we do at home. There is an occasional feast, as at a wedding, a funeral or a hair-cutting, and sometimes neighbor girls will sit together under the trees to sew, or by the same lamp at night to economize oil and to chat and gossip. A great place for the latter pastime is at the temples when they go to hear the Buddhist services, which are usually in Bali, and therefore not understood, or by the river-banks and wells when they go to fetch water.
Thus you see that housekeeping among the Siamese is very simple and primitive. There are no women who have worn out their lives in making and mending, baking and scrubbing, and fussing over a cook-stove. They do not dread the spring house-cleaning or the fall setting up of stoves and putting down of carpets. There is no Thanksgiving dinner to cook, nor Christmas holiday feasting, and no Fourth of July picnic; no preserving or pickling, no canning of fruits nor packing of butter nor pressing of cheese.
But, alas! there is no happy home-life either—no family altar, no pleasant social board where father, mother, sisters and brothers meet three times a day, and, thanking God for food, eat with joy and gladness and grow strong for his service; no sitting-room, where some of the happiest years of our lives are spent in loving companionship with those of our own household, no place for books, and no books to read, except perhaps a few vile tales or books of superstition and witchery.
May God pity Siam and plant in her kingdom many happy Christian homes! May her people be purified and cleansed, and taught of him in all things! Then, and not till then, will the good influences, working from the heart outward, touch and cleanse and beautify all their surroundings.
Note.—The reader will doubtless notice that my description is of Siamese life among the lower classes, not among those who have come in contact with missionaries and been improved somewhat, nor those of the higher classes in Bangkok—the princes and nobles, whose old-time home-life was neater and more orderly than that here described. These, through the influence of foreigners coming to Siam and visits to foreign lands, have raised themselves in the scale of living, and have foreign houses filled with foreign furniture and conveniences, order sumptuous meals from foreign bakeries, and have them placed upon their tables and served in modern style. I do not consider that true Siamese housekeeping.