he President considered my
society in itself enough for an evening's entertainment. It did cross
my mind that this might mean business, and I thought it none the worse
for that.

We dined in the famous veranda, the scene of so many brilliant
Whittingham functions. The dinner was beyond reproach, the wines
perfection. The President was a charming companion. Though not, as I
have hinted, a man of much education, he had had a wide experience of
life, and had picked up a manner at once quiet and cordial, which set
me completely at my ease. Moreover, he paid me the compliment,
always so sweet to youth, of treating me as a man of the world. With
condescending confidence he told me many tales of his earlier days;
and as he had been everywhere and done everything where and which
a man ought not to be and do, his conversation was naturally most
interesting.

"I am not holding myself up as an example," he said, after one of his
most unusual anecdotes. "I can only hope that my public services will
be allowed to weigh in the balance against my private frailties."

He said this with some emotion.

"Even your Excellency," said I, "may be content to claim in that
respect the same indulgence as Caesar and Henri Quatre."

"Quite so," said the President. "I suppose they were not exactly--eh?"

"I believe not," I answered, admiring the President's readiness, for
he certainly had a very dim notion who either of them was.

Dinner was over and the table cleared before the President seemed
inclined for serious conversation. Then he called for cigars, and
pushing them toward me said:

"Take one, and fill your glass. Don't believe people who tell you not
to drink and smoke at the same time. Wine is better without smoke,
and smoke is better without wine, but the combination is better than
either separately."

I obeyed his commands, and we sat smoking and sipping in silence for
some moments. Then the President said, suddenly:

"Mr. Martin, this country is in a perilous condition."

"Good God, your Excellency!" said I, "do you refer to the earthquake?"
(There had been a slight shock a few days before.)

"No, sir," he replied, "to the finances. The harbor works have
proved far more expensive than I anticipated. I hold in my hand the
engineer's certificate that nine hundred and three thousand dollars
have been actually expended on them, and they are not finished--not by
any means finished."

They certainly were not; they were hardly