The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, March 13, 1898, Page 22

THE SAN FRANCISCO CALL, SUNDAY, MARCH 13, 1898. Z ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT BARRIOS OF GUATEMALA Strange Events That Surrounded the Deaths of the Barrios, Unecle and Nephew. By an Eye-Witness of the Assassination of Reya Barrios. OD but a few feet away, and st.netly saw Oscar Zollinger shoot Maria Reyna Barrios, Presi- of Guater a. An hour before same Oscar Zollin- a game in the bil- > Hotel Germania. He 3 ger in the room, but it was not that fact alone that drew unusual, vsique and clean, defined features made him out in bold relief in a room with swarthy, thick-set Span- rply d filled iards. “The Jefe Politico told me,” said one of the billiard players, “that President Barrios has received three warnings that an attempt will be made to as- sassinate him to-night.” s well to-night as any other ti chimed in another; “it's bound to come, sooner or later. Caramba! Does Bar rios think the people wiil let him drain the country of its last real? He cannot take his money with him into the next world. For that muchas I, h!"” came in warning whispers. One of the director-generals entered he room and walked through, in the midst of a tell-tale silence. As he disappearec through the outer door, Zollinger walked away from the biliard-table and picked up a book, ap- parently taking no interest in the versation, that con- was resumed the mo- general disappeared. Y giued on the book; but I noticed that he did not once turn a page. “You should have been in the theater the other night,” said Don Antonio, the owner of a coffee plantation in Quezaltenango, “you could have seen how popular the President is. The house was packed. danseuse came out threw across her When the premiere n the last act they skir the Guate- The people shouted them- Then tk pic- McKinle malan flag. selves hoarse. one ans out s groan hou ‘B-a-r- r thought issing at her. The ledictions on - and the manager da: probably the name the curtain of how differently 1d be s e i on e beginning of queried a of suc- t despite Zollinger explana- the nephew of of Guatemala, Rufino Ba iron hand. me man, quick to and determined. he altenango. do 1 President were the pu- T wvent of the Sacred ¥ >m attracted the e was Francesca £ S , half Indian, but remarkably beau ‘I_shall marry that girl,’ exclaimed the President. “And forthwith he sent word to her father, Senor J 1 Aparicio, demand- ing the hand of his daughter in mar- riage. President’s notice. Aparicio, hal e Is too young,’ Insisted the father. “Two years from to-day,’ replied the President, after a moment's thought, 1 marry Francesca.’ “Her brother Juan, who was pres- ted that even then she would young—barely 15 years old. promptly arrested and cast ., but shortly released. ained t he had been arrested on account of a mistaken sus- ion, but it was currently believed hat the arrest was the result of the .r of President Barrios at the op= position to his demand for Francesca. “True to his word, Rufino Barrios married Francesco Aparicio two years from the day he st saw her in Que- zaltenang Not long after his mar- riage Barrios conceived the scheme of the un ation of Central America. In this he was prompted by his little con- vent wife, who was even more ambi- tious than her husband. “In the ars of revolutions and in- trigues that followed Reyna Barrios was his uncle’s right-hand man. In the spring of 1885 President Rufino Barrios proclaimed the unification of the Central American republics before the people assembled on the plains about Guatemala city. Young Reyna Barrios, risen to the rank of general, led the artillery in review past his un- cle. The President appointed himself Dictator amid wild cheers. “That night there was a special per- formance at the opera-house here. don’t think there had been ever sucha gay and brilliant audience asembled in this city. he officers were there in their brilliant uniforms, the ladies in evening gowns gleaming with jewels, and in one of the boxes blazing with diamonds sat Francesc Barrios, on ie of her her husband, the Dic- r, on the otk his nephew, Gene- al Reyna Barri “Well, at the close of the perform- ance the curtain was rung down, and in huge letters across the bottom was the name ‘I s, “The people went mad. They cheered Rufino Barrios, D ator of five Central ‘American republics. They sang praises of his wife, Francesca Aparicio Bar- rios. wuded loud and long for Genera a Barrios. “What a contrast was this scene to the hisses of the other night at the same theater. “BEach one of the Barrios family then called upon, and their word cheered to the echo by the audience. “Suddenly the shouts of joy changed to cries of terror. In some manner the was were curtain caught fire from the footlights, and the flames burned off the name of the Dictator before the fire could be extinguished. “It was prophetic! “The next night Gene Reyna 1 Barrios, with Barrio: econd in d, ma e Air Zal dent of Salvador, and on the n front the Guatemalan ggle, routed the Sal- dorean army. Dictator Barrios rode at the head of his victorious army and enjoyed but one brief moment of tri- umph, for the next he lay dead, shot by a concealed Salvadorean. “But another Barrios lived, and from Minister of War he rose to be Vice- President and finally to the Presidency. “Francesca Barrio with the im- mense fortune left by her husband, took her children and moved to New York. She has marri again and Marchioness Vi t will never forgiv Bar! becau: lution he orde Anparicio, killed. Aparicio w supposed to favor the anti-Barrios party, but it had never been prov Zollinger got up here anc b . A Spaniard who had sa over to us said: “Don’t you know th: that fellow who just left has charg the Aparicio plantation. They sa was very fond of Juan Aparicio. “He i8 a fine appearing chap; intelli- gent looking, too, d the American, 20,000 men, at he as we walked out of the hotel to- gether. At the corner we parted, and I con- tinued my way alone. The streets were alme nation of th he could t for he r and would guard again Y. Within a block and a half from the Presidential mansion I tock out my watch to note the time. It was 5 min- sroaching me I could distinguish s they red I recog- dent in his long military ov; , followed by When T reached. the building for- merly oceunted by the German legation the President’s party was directly op= ni heard rapid footsteps; watch in my hand nced at it. After d that it was exactly 1 still 1 and mechanically ward I remembe; T e (i after 8 later came another shot. s the street. One glance dent was surficient. He 8 minut A secc I ran a at the Pre! was dead. Fleeing in the cpposite direction was a tall form that looked familiar. The guards were running after the assas- sin. Th < now one but mvself to stand watc Before th reached other joined the guards. I remember 1 thought they must be policemen who had heard the firing. A few feet ahead of the pursuing crowd and running fast I could make out the tall form of the assassin. Then came another shot. The assas- sin must have fa for'seven or ejight shots followed in quick succession. By this time the crowd was beginning to gather around the stricken Presi- dent's form. Several lifted it and bore him to his home scarcely two blocks away. 1 hurried forward and joined the crowd standing around the dead assas- ITRLRE TR BEFORE THE GUARDS COULD RAISE THEIR RIFLES THE ASSASSIN HAD SHOT DOWN I edged my way to the front to a look at him and when I saw his atures und the blood and dirt I turned sick with hgrror. No wonder I had been struck by famili about the fleeing si It was ar Zollinger. Who is he?” “Why did he kill him?” came from all side: A planter from Quezaltenango pushed forward. “He told me coming down he that Juan Aparicio had been foully murdered and that President Barrios would some day suffer for his d Juan Aparicio had nd he had on earth.” night have known,’ an- hat he could not escar s willing to the price of death for revenge,” replied the planter. I reached the Presidential mansion just as the carriage drove up with Mme. Barrios, who had been staying at her villa in_the suburbs of the city. Every time I met Mme. Barrios I won- dered whether she would not have gladly exchanged her money and posi- tion to be again free and happy in her girlhood home in New Orleans. It had sin. been whispered that madame was un- happy. There were lines about her eyes and mouth that seemed to bear out this bit of gossip. But if it were s0 h sudden death had swept away all cold feelings. “Reyna!” “Reyna!” she whispered in a dazed, heartbroken way as they lifted her from- the carriage. The crowd before the entrance of the house confirmed her worst suspicions. He is dead!” she said, pitifully, and fainted away. * The crowd parted and she was borne within doors. How Zollinger knew that the Presi- dent would venture forth at just that hour w the question on every lip. The only solution offered and the gen- erally accepted one is that by some means. he got hold of the telephone message sent the President by a lady requesting him to call at 8:30 that even- ing. Despite the protests of his officers Barrios replied that he would come. Complete quiet prevailed in the city that night. While it was generally ex- pected that Barrios would meet such a fate the end came from such an un- 4444444444444+ 4 4444440404 ++ D R R R R S e o B e O R R e TR e i SHALL Wk T4X . THE BACHEEGRS? - 4444444444444 444444444444 4444424 4444444444044 4 4444344444444+ 4444444444444 4444444444444+ AS it not Benedick, in “Much Ado About Nothing,” who when being chaffed about marrying, replied: “No; the world must be peopled. When I said 1 would die a bachelor, I did not think I should live till I were married.” So there is still hope for every bache- lor to join the matrimonial state. As for me, I am a bachelor by preference, and as such feel I have a right to say man’s proper mission in life is not cor- rectly fulfilled so long as he remains in what is fallaciously called a state of single blessedness. When I add that in many instances bachelors continue bachelors from economy, it is because I know that your simon pure bachelor is selfish. He is that mode of life. ulnerable spot— exchequer—and 1 the vea 80 because he prefer So i u touch hi not his heart, but h tax him, grading the tax fr of youth to a larger tax as age suc- s, you not alone the State, > him from his opin- ad him, or rather cause him to lead, a bride to the altar. I yield to none in my knowledge of the insuperable infelicities which oc- cur in some married lives, and admit that some are due to early marriages. By early marriages I mean marriages which are consummated when the bri and groom are not of a sufficiently u derstandable age to appreciate the life contract into which they are about to enter. Yet it is my impression that a young man at 22 has a sufficient idea of the step he is about to take to view that as about the period of life when roposal of mar- r or two subse- 25 years of age— a man should make a riage. If within a y quent—say at 24 or s a man has not convinced himself of the necessity of married life, why a light tax ought to begin with the twenty-fifth year, and be graded from year to year, the tax becoming larger as the bachelar becomes older. Of course when a man arrives at the proverbial threescore and ten it seems as criminal to marry then as not to have married when life blood was at its best, the physique the strongest and the intellect acutest. . I should as strongly advise against a marriage after sixty-five as I would against one under twenty. If the tax were graded to a sufficient punishing extent, by the time a bachelor would have reached his sixty-fifth year of age he would, in my estimation, be considered as having done sufficient penance for his mis- take in not having taken unto himself a wife. Regarding the two dollar tax con- templated by the New Jersey statute I think the amount named too small. The tax should be graded according to the income and means combined of the *man who is taxed. My idea about the money received by the imposition of such a bachelor tax would be that it be distributed among the brides of the poor as wedding dow- ries, which, while being a tax on bach- elorhood, would place a premium on marriage. Now, as to the reverse. What about a man who has been jilted? Should he not have a rebate? If his is a bona fide refusal of marriage, should he not be entirely excused from paying tax? Has he not completed his mission when he endeavored to take unto him- self a wife? All things considered, I feel that the one refusal of an offer made in good faith should be sufficient to excuse the man from the tax, because the entire spirit of any proposed tax should be that it is inflicted solely on the theory that man must do what is in his power to aid society in its moral growth. If one believes with the poet that ““Marriages are made in heaven,” I can only suggest to the gentler sex the advice of Cowper:— Misses! the tale T relate, This lesson seems to. CArry— Choose not alone a proper mate, But a proper time to marry. This not alone would be a far reach- ing step toward the avoidance of the contemplated tax, but would make the seeking of divorce an exception. i THE PRESIDENT. expected quarter that everywhere groups of people discussed Zollinger's motives. As a rule in Central America the man who kills a President is the man who wishes to succeed him in office and it was hard for the Guatemalans to un- derstand that a man would kill the President to avenge the death of a friend. ‘Whatever the people had thought of Barrios living, they preserved a re- spectful silence as Barrios dead was carried to his final resting place. The casket was borne on the shoulders of the army officers of highest rank, the cabinet ministers ard the dean of the diplomatic corps attending. Along the avenue lined on either side with soldiers they bore the casket, followed by the mounted police, the Indian school with their band, the Jefe Politico, Justices of the Peace, Director Generals, sub- secretaries, cons r corps, magistrates, the diplomatic corps, military band and cadet corps in full dress. Directly fol- lowing the casket was the deceased President’s favorite horse. It was an impressive scene with all the pomp and military display fitting for one who had so often led the army and fought, if not always wisely, well. And with Reyna Barrios, as with his uncle, Rufino Barrios, the theater had -been the beginning of the end. A strange coincidence. But Rufino. Barrios had left the thea- ter amid cheers and applause to meet death on the fleld of battle. Reyna Barrios, hissed by the people, had died by the hand of an avenger. Still in both cases on the eves of their death the name “Barrios” blazed from the stage of the opera house. Another strange coincidence or prank of fate, or what you will: There was a strange jumbling of the number 8inthe fate of this man whose career had be- gun ‘when he was but eight years old and rode beside his uncle, Rufino Bar- rios, in the latter's first and unsuccess- ful attempt to seize the Guatemalan Government. / President Reyna Barrios fell on a street of Guatemala, in front of house No. 8 at 8 minutes past 8 February 8. Truly the number 8 was a prominent figure in his very eventful life. JOSE ESCOLDIDO. NTERESTING calculations made recently by a German statistician go to disprove the I-worn ad- age of Goldsmith that “man wants but little here below.” Man wants a good deal, and that is made evi- dent by the quantity of food he con- sumes in a lifetime—the food that goes to form the basis of his physical life. Somewhat surprising in regard to weight and quantity is the substance consumed in a single day by the ordi- nary human being with a healthy ap- petite. When the quantities consumed in weeks, months and years are calcu- lated and presented to the eye in strik- ing contrast to the consumer, the ef- fect is little less than startling. Loaves of bread, big as houses, are tbe result. The quantities of meat Here Is an Astounding Record of PICTURE ILLUSTRATING THE eaten in an ordinary lifetime by the normal man, when contrasted with him in the original form of pigs and oxen, assume the proportions of antediluvian monsters. These startling analogies are of the nature to delight the hearts of doctors who maintain that men are accustomed to eat far more than is necessary to sustain their bodies. ~The calculations given below are made from estimates of the food consumed by a person in a lifetime of seventy years, with a healthy appetite for solid and liquid nourishment. With a proper allowance for the years of infancy and old age, when the amount consumed is de- creased probably one-half, the esti- mates are based on a term of sixty years. In sixty years, therefore, a healthy man consumes daily at least a pound and a half of bread food, in the form What an Ordinarv Human ENORMOUS QUANTITY OF FOOD CONSUMED BY A MAN IN HIS LIFETIME of bread, rolls, biscuits, etc. The com- bined guantity for six decades would weigh about 66,150 pounds. Molded into a loaf of bread the giant loaf would occupy a space of 440 cubic meters. If one eats daily about three pota- toes, with a combined weight of one- fourth of a pound, there will have been consumed in a lifetime a giant potato that would almost fill a rail- Wway passenger car, and so heavy that a corps of porters would be unable to unload it. Vegetables consumed In the same period present a no less formidable ar- ray. In sixty years one person de- vours a half million peas, and if these were imagined in a single pod it would take an hour’s tramp to traverse the length of the giant vegetable. No less massive would be the carrot con- sumed. Lettuce leaves, by the same calculation, would cover the floors of twelve rooms, while the quantity of cabbages, beans and minor vegetables would fill twenty farmers’ wagons. Taken for granted that an ordinary consumer eats daily for breakfast two ) g TS i slices of ham or bacon, for lunch a veal: cutlet and for dinner a half pound of beef—an estimate by no means exaggerated—the following startling comparisons ~ may be evolved: The rashers of bacon, ranged one beside the other, would extend for three-fourths of a mile. It would take an hour and a quarter to walk past the line of cutlets. The beef would resolve itself into twenty oxen and the pork into a like number of pigs. Summed up, the combined quantities of beef eaten would create a giant ox 79,380 pounds in weight and more than sixteen feet high. Compare for a mo- ment this monstrous beast with the tiny baby that will eat and digest the former at the rate of one pound a day in a lifetime of sixty years! If to the meat consumed one adds a daily portion of a half pound of fish, there will be an additional amount of 22,000 pounds. There is also the little item of 10,000 eggs to be considered. The amount of sugar and salt con- sumed can only be superficially calcu- I - Ten Sajt Statves Eatenin 60 Years lated. In estimating the amounts on the basis of those declared necessary for a year's provisioning to the Klon- dike and multiplying them by sixty the result will give 9900 pounds of sugar and 1650 pounds of salt. This would be sufficient sugar to sweeten the rain fall- ing on an acre of ground. There would be enough salt to model the figures of ten men overtaken by the fate of Lot's wife. To complete the total it would be only necessary to add a ton of butter and a round of cheese abcut 650 pounds in weight. Nor are condiments to be over- looked, when it is remembered that the dabbing of mustard and the sprinkling of pepper are continued for sixty years. This adds to the list 100 pots of mus- tard and fourteen pounds of pepper. The quantity of fruit eaten is more va- riable. The apple of a lifetime would be about fifteen feet, the orange and pear about three and a half feet in size. The plum would be so big and heavy that the man who had eaten the fruit would be unable’to move it. Calculating, therefore, on a daily ra- Enormovs Vessel That wovld tlold Consvmed Flvids. Being Eats in the Course of His Existence. Twenty Oxen Are Nothing to Him, and He Smokes Cigarettes Bigger than the Size of the One on the Ox’s Back Will Eat, If He Lives an Average Lifetime, an Animal of That Giant’s Size. tion of one and one-half pounds of bread, a pound of meat, a half pound of fish, two pounds of vegetables and fruit and a half pound of divers other eatables, there ‘would be a total of five and one-half pounds of food a day, or almost a ton in one year and fifty-three and three-fourths tons in sixty years. Liquids consumed by a human being present a no less astounding result. A half-pint of tea or coffee in the morn- ing, as much water, beer, &ec., at mid- day, and perhaps a pint in the even- ing, besides a pint of milk, tea, beer and wine during the day, make three pints per day, about five hundred quarts a year, and in seventy years 35,000 quarts. It would take a vessel 2500 times greater than an ordinary bucket to hold such an amount of li- quid. Taken all in all, a healthy man with a good appetite and moderate thirst consumes in seventy years ninety-six and a half tons of solid and liquid foods. If the consumer weighs, say 150 pounds, he will eat and drink dur- ing his lifetime 1280 times his own weight. Transforming all this food- % u ; St Baby and Giant 0x **” Goliath. AL\ AN it Experts Have Figured Out That an stuff into mechanical labor, the strength derived would be sufficient to lift 87,600,000 tons one foot from the ground, or to raise the Forth bridge at Edfiburgh, which weighs 264,600,000 pounds, to a height of 1235 feet. Excluding the first twenty years of a lifetime, the quantity of cigarettes con- sumed by a regular smoker who smokes a dozen every day would in fifty years reach the number of two hundred and nineteen thousand, or a monster rolled cigarette more than sixteen feet in length and about five feet thick, beside which the tallest man would resemble a veritable dwarf. A cigar smoker consuming six of his favorite brand a day would, during his lifetime, smoke a gigantic cigar of more than sixteen feet long and almost two and a half feet thick. It would weigh 4410 pounds and would take the suction power of a steam engine to puff it. As the smoking habit is not neces- sary to existence, it is easily seen how much money a smoker wastes in the course of years. A pipe smoker con- sumes in his lifetime a half-ton of to= bacco. Infant