Mrs. Barrios was the loveliest woman in Guatemala; beautiful in character as well as person, socially brilliant and graceful, charitable beyond all precedent in a country where the poor are usually permitted to take care of themselves, generous and hospitable, a good mother to a fine family of children, and a devoted wife, loyal to all the President’s ambitions, and an enthusiastic supporter of all his schemes. Like a wise man who knows the perils which constantly surround him, and the uncertainty of the head which wears a crown in these countries, he had made ample provision for his family by purchasing for Mrs. Barrios a handsome residence in Fifth Avenue near Sixty-fifth Street, New York, and investing about a million dollars in her name in other New York real estate. His life was also insured for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in New York companies, which, it must be said, carried a hazardous risk, as there were hundreds of men who lived only to see Barrios buried. Very few of them were in Guatemala, however, during his lifetime. They did not find the atmosphere agreeable there. They were exiles in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, California, or elsewhere, waiting for a chance to give him a dose of dynamite or prick him with a dagger. [Illustration: FORT OF SAN JOSÉ, GUATEMALA.] Mrs. Barrios and her children talk English as well as if they had always lived in New York. While the President himself could not speak the language fluently, he could understand what was said to him, and apologized for what he called a misfortune, on the ground that he did not have the opportunity to learn it until he was too old to master its intricacies. But he required English to be taught in all the common-schools, and the children use nothing but American text-books. I talked with him one day, with his little girl as an interpreter. She was a beautiful child, about ten years of age, and when she said she was an American (which means a citizen of the United States) the President patted her fondly upon the head and cried “bueno” (good).