e lub to dat man what got dat bed. Him got plenty ob
sheets." Which proved a wise suggestion.

Empire hotel sat a bit down the hill. There the "gold" ranks were again
subdivided. The coatless ate and sweltered inside the great
dining-room; the formal sat in haughty state in what was virtually a
second-story veranda overlooking the railroad yards and a part of the
town, where were tables of four, electric fans, and "Ben" to serve with
butler formality. I found it worth while to climb the hill for my coat
thrice a day. As yet I was jangling down a Panamanian dollar at each
appearance, but the day was not far distant when I should receive the
"recruits" hotel-book and soon grow as accustomed as the rest to having
a coupon snatched from it by the yellow negro at the door. Uncle Sam's
boarding scale on the Zone is widely varied. Three meals cost the
non-employee $1.50, the "gold" employee $.90, the white European
laborer $.40, and negroes in general $.30.

That afternoon, when the sun had begun to bow its head on the thither
side of the canal, I climbed to the newly labeled census office on the
knoll behind the police station, from the piazza of which all native
Empire lies within sweep of the eye. "The boss," a smiling youth only
well started on his third decade, whose regular duties were in the
sanitary department, had already moved bed, bag, and baggage into the
room that had been assigned the census, that he might be "always on the
job."

Not till eight that evening, however, did the force gather to look
itself over. There was the commander-in-chief of the census bureau,
sent down from Washington specifically for the task in hand, under whom
as chairmen we settled down into a sort of director's meeting, a wholly
informal, coatless, cigarette-smoking meeting in which even the chief
himself did not feel it necessary to let his dignity weigh upon him. He
had been sent down alone. Hence there had been great scrambling to
gather together on the Zone men enough who spoke Spanish--and with no
striking success. Most noticeable of my fellow-enumerators, being in
uniform, were three Marines from Bas Obispo, fluent with the working
Spanish they had picked up from Mindanao to Puerto Rico, and
flush-cheeked with the prospect of a full month on "pass," to say
nothing of the $4.40 a day that would be added to their daily military
income of $.60. Then there were four of darker hue,--Panamanians and
West Indians; and how rare are Span