I saw the president but once, and then but for a few moments. He was at the Yellow House and holding a public reception, to which every one was admitted with a freedom that betokened absolute democracy. When my turn came he talked awhile through Colonel Bird, our consul, but there was no chance for me to gain any idea of him except that he was very polite, as are all Venezuelans, and very large. They tell a story of him which illustrates his character. He was riding past the university when a group of students hooted and jeered at him, not because of his politics, but because of his origin. A policeman standing by, aroused to indignation by this insult to the president, fired his revolver into the crowd. Crespo at once ordered the man’s arrest for shooting at a citizen with no sufficient provocation, and rode on his way without even giving a glance at his tormentors. The incident seemed to show that he was too big a man to allow the law to be broken even in his own defence, or, at least, big enough not to mind the taunts of ill-bred children. The boys of the university are taken very seriously by the people of Caracas, as are all boys in that country, where a child is listened to, if he be a male child, with as much grave politeness as though it were a veteran who was speaking. The effect is not good, and the boys, especially of the university, grow to believe that they are very important factors in the affairs of the state, when, as a matter of fact, they are only the cat’s-paws of clever politicians, who use them whenever they want a demonstration and do not wish to appear in it themselves. So these boys are sent forth shouting into the streets, and half the people cheer them on, and the children themselves think they are patriots or liberators, or something equally important. I obtained a rather low opinion of them because they stoned an unfortunate American photographer who was taking pictures in the quadrangles, and because I was so far interested in them as to get a friend of mine to translate for me the sentences and verses they had written over the walls of their college. The verses were of a political character, but so indecent that the interpreter was much embarrassed; the single sentences were attacks, anonymous, of course, on fellow-students. As the students of the University of Venezuela step directly from college life into public life, their training is of some interest and importance. And I am sure that the Venezuelan fathers would do much better by their sons if they would cease to speak of the university in awe-stricken tones as “the hot-bed of liberty,” but would rather take away the boys’ revolvers and teach them football, and thrash them soundly whenever they caught them soiling the walls of their alma mater with nasty verses. [Illustration: A CLEARING IN THE COUNTRY]