d had him placed
under arrest. The negro: "Why, boss, can't a man chastize his wife when
she desarves and needs it?"

Dr. O----: "Not on the Canal Zone. It's against the law."

Negro (in great astonishment): "Is dat so, boss. Den ah'll never do it
again, boss--on de Canal Zone."

One morning in the heart of Empire a noise not unlike that of a rocky
waterfall began to grow upon my ear. Louder and louder it swelled as I
worked slowly forward. At last I discovered its source. In a lower room
of a tenement an old white-haired Jamaican had fitted up a private
school, to which the elite among the darker brethren sent their
children, rather than patronize the common public schools Uncle Sam
provides free to all Zone residents. The old man sat before some twenty
wide-eyed children, one of whom stood slouch-shouldered, book in hand,
in the center of the room, and at regular intervals of not more than
twenty seconds he shouted high above all other noises of the
neighborhood:

"Yo calls dat Eng-leesh! How eber yo gon' l'arn talk proper lika dat,
yo tell me?"

Far back in the interior of an Empire block I came upon an old, old
negro woman, parchment-skinned and doddering, living alone in a
stoop-shouldered shanty of boxes and tin cans. "Ah don' know how ol' ah
is, mahster," was one of her replies, "but ah born six years befo' de
cholera diskivered."

"When did you come to Panama?"

"Ah don' know, but it a long time ago."

"Before the Americans, perhaps?"

"Oh, long befo'! De French ain't only jes' begin to dig. Ah's ashamed
to say how long ah been here" (just why was not evident, unless she
fancied she should long ago have made her fortune and left). "Is you a
American? Well, de Americans sure have done one thing. Dey mak' dis
country civilize. Why, chil', befo' dey come we have all de time here
revolutions. Ah couldn't count to how many revolutions we had, an'
ebery time dey steal all what we have. Dey even steal mah clothes. Ah
sure glad fo' one de Americans come."

It was during my Empire enumerating that I was startled one morning to
burst suddenly from the tawdry, junk-jumbled rooms of negroes into a
bare-floored, freshly scrubbed room containing some very clean cots, a
small table and a hammock, and a general air of frankness and
simplicity, with no attempt to disguise the commonplace. At the table
sat a Spaniard in worn but newly washed working-clothes, book in hand.
I sat down and, falling unconsciously into t