We had an Annamite mission to dine one night and had invited almost all the ambassadors and ministers to meet them.

We were quite seven or eight minutes late and found all the company assembled (except the Annamites, who were waiting with their interpreter in another room to make their entry in proper style).

The Annamites were something awful to see.

"'Strange,' thinks I. 'Chinks an' Portugoose we expects here, likewise Annamites and Senegalese an' doughboys; but I never heard that the BUFFALO BILL aggregation had taken the war-path.'

For a long time the work was done by soldiers, but when I went up to Paris, four weeks ago, the work was being done by Annamites in their saffron-colored clothes and queer turbans, and I found the same little people cleaning the streets in Paris.

Paul Giran, Magie et Religion Annamites (Paris, 1912), pp.