Our Minister, Mr. Barrett, had a charming house in the old tropic city and on the Monday evening after our arrival he gave a dinner at which were gathered many high officials of the Panama Republic as well as all the interesting Americans who were then directing our great Canal building enterprise. Mr. Barrett, being a bachelor, placed President Amador opposite himself; he took Madame Amador at his right; Mr. Taft sat next to her, while I occupied the place at the right of the President and had on my other side Señor Arias, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. General Davis, Mr. Wallace, Colonel Gorgas⁠—“the man of the hour” during that cleaning-up period⁠—many Army officers and Cabinet Ministers in full regalia and many decorations, with their wives, were seated in order of rank along the sides of the great table, which, laden with flowers and gleaming glass and candles, made a picture long to be remembered even by one whose memory is overcrowded with dinner-party scenes.

The formality of this occasion, however, began and ended with its costuming and its beautiful tropic “setting.” Nearly everybody, including the President and Madame Amador, spoke English as well as Spanish, and the evening was gay from the outset. There is a wonderful fish caught in Panama waters; I wish I could remember its name; it is delicious and rare beyond description, and our pleasantries began with the President’s demand for a second helping which the embarrassed host and the more than flustered servants were unable to supply. The persiflage then turned upon the unenviable position of a bachelor diplomat and we all advised Mr. Barrett to get married. He parried our jibes as best he could until President Amador volunteered the information that the American Minister was honorary President of the Iris Club, an association of some three hundred-odd of the choicest girls in Panama. “And he can’t get one out of the lot,” said the President.