tion.

Meanwhile the enrolling by day continued unabated. I had my first
experience enumerating "gold" married quarters--white American
families; just enough for experience and not enough to suffer severely.
The enrolling of West Indians was pleasanter. The wives of locomotive
engineers and steam-shovel cranemen were not infrequently supercilious
ladies who resented being disturbed during their "social functions" and
lacked the training in politeness of Jamaican "mammies." Living in
Paradise now under a paternal all-providing government, they seemed to
have forgotten the rolling-pin days of the past. It was here in Paraiso
that I first encountered that strange, that wondrous strange custom of
lying about one's age. Negro women never did. What more absurd,
uncalled-for piece of dishonesty! Does Mrs. Smith fear that Mrs. Jones
next door will succeed in pumping out of me that capital bit of
information? Little does she know the long prison sentence at "hard
labor" that stares me in the face for any such slip; to say nothing of
my naturally incommunicative disposition. Or is she ashamed to let ME
know the truth?--unaware that all such information goes in at my ears
and down my pencil to the pink card before me like a message over the
wires, leaving no more trace behind. Surely she must know that I care
not a pencil-point whether she is eighteen or fifty-two, nor remember
which one minute after her screen door has slammed behind me--unless
she has caused me to glance up in wonder at her silvering temples of
thirty-five when she simpers "twenty-two"--and to set her down as forty
to be on the safe side. Oh now, please, ladies, do not understand me as
accusing the American wives of Paraiso in general of this weakness. The
large majority were quite pleasant, frank, and overflowing with cheery
good sense. But the percentage who were not was far larger than I, who
am also an American, was pleased to find it.

But doubly astonishing were the few cases of lying by proxy. A
"clean-cut," college-graduated civil engineer of thirty-two whom one
would have cited as an example of the best type of American, gave all
data concerning himself in an unimpeachable manner. His wife was
absent. When the question of her age arose he gave it, with the
slightest catch in his voice, as twenty. Now that might be all very
well. Men of thirty-two are occasionally so fortunate as to marry girls
of twenty. But a moment later the gentleman in question fin