d been several times in the interior where there
was occasionally a clean floor. This morning we wrote direct to the
President, asking for an interview or audience and did not ask our
Consul to help us because Jeffs. had asked him in our presence to come
meet us and he said he would after he had done talking to some other
men, but he never came. Before we heard from Bonilla however, we
learned that the Vice-president who has the same name was to be sworn
in so we went to the palace along with the populace in their bare feet.
We sat out of sight but the English Consul who was the finest looking
person in the chamber--all over gold lace--saw us and asked that we be
given places in front, which the minister of something asked us to take
but we objected on account of our clothes. Somers had on a flannel
suit that looked exactly like pajamas and lawn tennis shoes. But as
soon as the ceremony was over they insisted on our going in to the
banquet hall and in spite of our objections we were there conveyed and
presented to Bonilla who behaved very well and after saying he had
received our letters but had not had time to read them left us and
avoided us, which was what we wanted for we looked like the devil. We
met everybody else though and took the English and Guatemalian Consuls
back to our rooms and gave them drinks and then we went to their rooms,
so the day went very pleasantly. The President sent us a funny printed
card appointing an audience at eleven to-morrow. It is exactly what
you would imagine it would be, the soldiers are barefooted except about
fifty and the President leaned out of the window in his shirt sleeves
after the review and they have not plastered up the holes in his palace
that his cannon made in it just a year ago to-day, when he was fighting
Vasquez, and Vasquez was then on the inside and Bonilla on the hills.
I forgot to tell you that this morning a boy about sixteen years old,
with a policeman's badge and club came to our window and talked
pleasantly with us or at us rather, while we shaved and guyed him in
English. Finally we found that he had come to arrest Jeffs. so we told
him where Jeffs. was but he preferred to watch us shave and we finished
it under his custody. Then we went to the Commandante and found that
the mosers had had Jeffs. arrested for not paying them on their arrival
at Tegucigalpa, as we had distinctly told them we would not do but at
San Pedro from where we took them, on th