His Excellency the President and his lady wife in the great hall of the Presidential Palace.

In front of the Presidential Palace

This picture was taken as His Excellency the President was stepping into his car to go to the Government Palace, with the Republican Guard presenting the salute.

A Day at

Fortune favored me with an appointment with Mrs. Laure, wife of His Excellency the President of the Republic, on Sunday morning — and Sunday is family day at the Presidential Palace, which His Excellency the President spends with his family, resting from the arduous and weighty labors he performs during the week, and enjoying a calm family atmosphere in which love, understanding, and peace prevail.

I met Her Ladyship on the palace steps, returning from church. She turned to me with her familiar smile and said: I hope the questions will not be embarrassing. After we had entered her private room, and after she had been kind enough to ask me about our paper and the other work carried on by the Lebanese Women's League, I put my first question to her: "What was the first thought that came to you when the news reached you that His Excellency the President had won the election?" She hesitated a moment before answering, as though calling back the memory of that day, then said with complete simplicity: "I prayed. Yes, the first thing that came to me was to kneel and pray, and to ask God to watch over my husband and help him bear this grave responsibility laid upon his shoulders, and to smooth the way for him to serve his country and lead Lebanon along the straight path, as he had always wished.

"And when the President came home, I pledged to him that I would do everything in my power to fulfill my duty toward him and toward Lebanon as a loyal Lebanese citizen. Then we went in our own car, without escort or guard, to his mother's house in Furn el-Chebbak — not as President and President's lady, but as son and daughter — to kiss her hand and ask her blessing."

At this I asked her: "Your duties as the wife of the first President are many and varied. Which of them is dearest to you, and which the most trying?"

"My duty is a double duty: my duty toward my family, as mother and wife, and my duty toward Lebanon, as the wife of its first President — and I do not know which of the two duties is more precious to me and dearer to my heart. I love my family; I watch over it and spare nothing, dear or cheap, for its comfort and happiness. I work always to make my home a place where my husband finds contentment and my children find warmth, where they find complete rest and perfect peace of mind.

"And Lebanon is my larger family. I do not begrudge it what I do not begrudge my own family: for it too I spare nothing, dear or cheap, for its strengthening and its safety, and I long to see every one of its members prosperous and secure beneath its sky. I deny myself no service that I am able to render in this cause.

"There are