of charge.

Just here it may be well to explain that the I. C. C. has very
dexterously dodged the necessity of lining the Zone with the offensive
signs "Black" and "White." 'T would not be exactly the distinction
desired anyway. Hence the line has been drawn between "Gold" and
"Silver" employees. The first division, paid in gold coin, is made up,
with a few exceptions, of white American citizens. To the second belong
any of the darker shade, and all common laborers of whatever color,
these receiving their wages in Panamanian silver. 'T is a deep and
sharp-drawn line. The story runs that Liza Lawsome, not long arrived
from Jamaica, entering the office of a Zone dentist, paused suddenly
before the announcement:

Crownwork. Gold and Silver Fillings.
Extractions wholly without Pain.

There was deep disappointment in face and voice as she sat down with a
flounce of her starched and snow-white skirt, gasping:

"Oh, Doctah, does I HAVE to have silver fillings?"

My room-mates, "Mitch" and "Tom," sat respectively at the throttle of a
locomotive that jerked dirt-trains out of the "cut" and straddled a
steam-shovel that ate its way into Culebra range. Whence, of course,
they were covered with the grease and grime incident to those
occupations. Which did not make them any the less companionable--though
it did promise a distinct increase in my laundry bill. When they had
descended again to the labor-train and been snatched away to their
appointed tasks, I sat a short hour in one of the black "Mission"
rocking-chairs on the screened veranda puzzling over a serious problem.
The quarters of the "gold" employee is as completely furnished as any
reasonable man could demand, his iron cot with springs and mattress
unimpeachable--but just there the maternal generosity of the government
ceases. He must furnish his own sheets and pillow--MUST because
placards on the wall sternly warn him not to sleep on the bare
mattress; and the New York Sunday edition that had served me thus far I
had carelessly left behind at Corozal police station. To be sure there
were sheets for sale in Empire, at the Commissary--where money has the
purchasing-power of cobble-stones, and coupon-books come only to those
who have worked a day or more on the Zone. Then the Jamaican janitor,
drifting in to potter about the room, evidently guessed the cause of my
perplexity, for he turned to point to the bed of the absent "Mitch" and
gurgled:

"Jes' you mak