ard; "What do you think I'm down here
for, me health?"

Surely we can't blame it all to the steward, or to any other
individual. Lay it rather to human nature, that stumbling-block of so
many varnished and upholstered systems.

I hope I am not giving the impression that I.C.C. hotels are
unendurable. "Stay home"--which on the Zone means always eat at the
same hotel table--subsidize your waiter and you do moderately well. But
to move thither and yon, as any plain-clothes man must, is unfortunate.
The only difference then is that the next is worse than the last.
Whatever their convictions upon arrival, almost all Americans have come
down to paying their waiter the regular blackmail of a dollar a month
and setting it down as one of the unavoidable evils of life. One or two
I knew who insisted on sticking to "principles," and they grew leaner
and lanker day by day.

Because of these things many an American employee will be found eating
in private restaurants of the ubiquitous Chinaman or the occasional
Spaniard, though here he must often pay in cash instead of in futures
on his labor--which are so much cheaper the world over. It is sad
enough to dine on the same old identical round for months. But how if
you were one of those who blew in on the heels of the last Frenchman
and have been eating it ever since? By this time even rat-tails would
be a welcome change--and with genuine socialism there would not even be
that escape. It is said to be this hotel problem as much as the
perpetual spring-time of the Zone that so frequently reduces--with the
open connivance of the government--a building housing forty-eight
quiet, harmless bachelors to a four-family residence housing eight and
gradually upwards; that wreaks such matrimonious havoc among the
white-frocked stenographers who come down to type and remain to cook.

Besides the hotel there is the P.R.R. commissary, the government
department stores. It is likewise laundry, bakery, ice-factory; it
makes ice-cream, roasts coffee, sends out refrigerator-cars and a
morning supply train to bring your orders right to your door--oh, yes,
it strongly resembles what Bellamy dreamed years ago. Only, as in the
case of the hotel, there seems to be a fly or two in the amber.

The laundry is tolerable--fancy turning your soiled linen over to a
railroad company--all machine done of course, as everything would be
under socialism, and no come-back for the garment that is not hardy
enough of