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As pay-day approached there came the duty of standing a half-hour at the station gate before the departure of each train to watch and discuss with the ponderous, smiling, dark-skinned chief of Panama's plain-clothes squad, or with a vigilante the suspicious characters and known crooks of all colors going out along the line.

I'll tell Elise you're here. I know she'll be glad to see you. She has been very much upset." She remained standing before him long enough for him to be aware of a projecting bust, of white serge, of smartness, of purplish copper hair, a raking panama's white brim, of eyebrows, a rouged smile, and a smell of orris root. Before he could grasp its connexion with Mrs.

And here is an unpalatable truthlet Panama's earnings from passengers can never be considerable, compared with that constant ebbing and flowing of humanity between the home countries of Europe and their dependencies in Asia, Africa and Australasia. As a highway of travel, Panama can never have a quarter of the income from passengers as that yearly accruing to the Suez company.

All the powerful nations speedily followed our example and recognized Panama's independence. In September, 1900, the city of Galveston was visited by one of the greatest disasters known in American history.

Which is why I was shocked next morning by the disrespectful report of Renson that "my friend the boss had tied a can to the Spig's tail," and our dainty and lamented comrade went back to the more fitting blue-blood occupation of swinging a cane in the lobbies of Panama's famous hostelries. But what mattered such small losses?

It is when one comes to consider Panama's influence on rail traffic that it becomes apparent the Canal may divert half the Dominion's traffic to seaboard by Pacific routes. Why do you suppose that the big grain companies of the Northwest want to reverse their former policy?

For the Panamanian has little love for the United States or its people; which is the customary thanks any man or nation gets for lifting a dirty half-breed gamin from the gutter. Off in the vortex of the city lolls Panama's public market, where Chinamen are the chief sellers and flies the chief consumers.

In Colón on the Atlantic side and in Panama on the Pacific, East and West literally meet at the crossroads of the world. The winding streets are crowded with the brown and black people who comprise three-fourths of Panama's population.

All this may be different when Panama's electric line, all the way from Balboa docks to Las Sabanas, is opened but that's another year. Meanwhile the lolling in carriages comes to be quite second nature. But like any tropical Spanish town Panama seethes only by night, especially Saturday and Sunday nights when the paternal Zone government allows its children to spend the evening in town.

As everything must have its flaws, perhaps the chief one that might be charged against the Z. P. is "red tape." Strictly speaking it is no Z. P. fault at all, but a weakness of all government. One example will suffice. During the month of May I was assigned the investigation of certain alleged conditions in Panama's restricted district.