SKETCH OF SIR CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 549 



and more obvious, if not more exemplary, punishment. " There are 

 two chances in the stare of a demon," says the Burmese proverb, " there 

 is none in that of a king." One formality, indeed, remains, which is 

 often omitted, it is true, but which no man of well-ordered mind should 

 fail to observe. It relates to the setting up of the stair, or rather lad- 

 der, by which the house is entered, all the dwellings in Indo-China 

 being raised off the ground on piles. If this stair is turned to the 

 south, let a cat be the first living creature to ascend. If you manage 

 this, then you will always have abundance in your house. The diffi- 

 culty is to make the cat see the matter in the same light. If your 

 steps face the west the question is simpler. All you have to do is to 

 take some iron in your hand along with a few lotus-leaves and a wisp 

 of kaing, or elephant-grass. Everything you attempt will thereafter 

 come easy to you. A cock should crow at the top to inaugurate the 

 stair ascending on the north side of the house. This also is a matter 

 likely to keep you out of your dwelling for a long time if you persist 

 in waiting for it. Stairs never ascend from the east, for the same 

 reason that no Buddhist should sleep with his feet pointing to that 

 quarter. It was from the east that the Lord Buddha came, and it 

 would be scandalous to show to that quarter a disrespect that would 

 entail severe punishment if it were exhibited toward the king or a great 

 man. It will hardly be necessary to mention that there is only one 

 set of stairs and one entrance to the house, if built according to the 

 national model. 



It will thus be seen that, though a wooden house or a walled hut 

 does not seem to imply much expenditure of time, labor, or capital in 

 its construction, yet, in reality, what with the perplexing rules to be 

 attended to, the dangers to be avoided, and the spirits to be propiti- 

 ated, the Eastern house-builder has emphatically a hard time of it, and 

 is not to be envied by Westerns who have no greater grievances than 

 damp walls, defective drainage, perpetual draughts, and chimneys that 

 will not draw. — Saturday Review. 



SKETCH OF SIR CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 



IN a paper giving an account of the British Association of 1882, of 

 which Dr. Siemens was president. Professor Emil du Bois-Rey- 

 mond referred, with some expressions of admiration, to the many ways 

 in which the name of Siemens is identified with the most important 

 of the recent advances in technical science. What Krupp is among 

 German industrials in warlike arts, he said, the collective name of 

 Siemens is in the arts of peace. Siemens telegraph wires gird the 

 earth, and the Siemens cable-steamer Faraday is continually engaged 

 in laying new ones. By the Siemens method has been solved the 

 problem, by the side of which that of finding a needle in a hay-stack 



