r American standard.
Production was slack, invention at a standstill, and taxation heavy. I
suppose the President's talents were more adapted to founding a
state in the shock and turmoil of war, than to the dull details of
administration; and although he was nominally assisted by a cabinet of
three ministers and an assembly comprising twenty-five members, it
was on his shoulders that the real work of government fell. On him,
therefore, the moral responsibility must also rest--a burden the
President bore with a cheerfulness and equanimity almost amounting to
unconsciousness.

I first set foot in Aureataland in March, 1880, when I was landed
on the beach by a boat from the steamer, at the capital town of
Whittingham. I was a young man, entering on my twenty-sixth year, and
full of pride at finding myself at so early an age sent out to fill
the responsible position of manager at our Aureataland branch. The
directors of the bank were then pursuing what may without unfairness
be called an adventurous policy, and, in response to the urgent
entreaties and glowing exhortations of the President, they had decided
on establishing a branch at Whittingham. I commanded a certain amount
of interest on the board, inasmuch as the chairman owed my father a
sum of money, too small to mention but too large to pay, and when, led
by the youthful itch for novelty, I applied for the post I succeeded
in obtaining my wish, at a salary of a hundred dollars a month. I
am sorry to say that in the course of a later business dealing the
balance of obligation shifted from the chairman to my father, an
unhappy event which deprived me of my hold on the company and
seriously influenced my conduct in later days. When I arrived in
Aureataland the bank had been open some six months, under the guidance
of Mr. Thomas Jones, a steady going old clerk, who was in future to
act as chief (and indeed only) cashier under my orders.

I found Whittingham a pleasant little city of about five thousand
inhabitants, picturesquely situated on a fine bay, at the spot where
the river Marcus debouched into the ocean. The town was largely
composed of Government buildings and hotels, but there was a street
of shops of no mean order, and a handsome square, called the "Piazza
1871," embellished with an equestrian statue of the President. Round
about this national monument were a large number of seats, and, hard
by, a _cafe_ and band stand. Here, I soon found, was the center of