A WOMAN in the WILDERNESS for a Bull Terrier

IV Panama, July, 1914. The days go by unmarked except for the mails. I see by the calendar that we are in July. Twice a day, in the morning and afternoon, the little passenger train emerges from the forest, runs out into the open along the line that cuts the fill in two, and pulls up at the passenger station on the edge of the lagoon. There she meets the passenger launch from Bocas del Toro, and exchanging loads, the launch turns back across the lagoon, and the train trots back over the fill and disappears into the forest. Some- times she runs into a banana train and smashes a coach, and sometimes the rains wash away the track. Then she is late. Sometimes among the natives a jealous husband will arise in his anger and shoot his rival or his wife or whoever happens to be nearest when the gun goes off. And sometimes, too, a white man will find himself in the same predicament, but as the amenities are as often as not mutual, each, re- turns the membering the respect due to civilization, other way and the gun does not go off. 45 A WOMAN And true to the spirit of democracy in this back- water of democracy the question of caste is a burning one. Down here upon the dump the matter sleeps fairly peacefully. All are socially as well as geographically on pretty much the same level. The wife of the man who runs the sand pump hasn't anything over the wife of the man who guides the steam shovel, nor can the wife of the concrete mixers' presiding genius feel immensely superior to the wife of her husband's manager unless she is possessed of the inside knowledge that she herself came from Philadelphia, Pa., while the assistant's wife first saw the light at Memphis, Tenn. Of course on the fiat or in the hills there are always things that a lady cannot do without causing comment —be seen too often with the same gentleman, cough without putting her hand before her mouth and saying, " " intro- Pardon me ; and speaking without being duced. I know how to behave even though I don't do it. It may be a matter of choice whether you speak of your husband as Mr. Jones and sign your name as it Mrs. Jones ; there can be no two ways about that a woman is a lady friend, a man a gentleman friend, and a girl a young lady. On that we are all agreed. But it is a little too much to expect that a lady who once was a conductor's wife and is now the wife of one of the superintendents of the line (the same husband, but sprung to authority through the sad but opportune demise of his superior officer) should have her house in the same street with the conductors' wives. Call upon 46 IN THE WILDERNESS them, yes, go to the same parties with them and dance with their husbands, yes ; but Hve in the same street with them, no ! The hot and haughty blood of a hundred newly elevated conductors' wives rises and surges in a just and righteous revolt. By our husbands' shedded caps and buttons, no ! no ! no ! The office is now finished, after the usual countless delays that attend any work done there. Nothing is ever done to-day ; everything is to-morrow, and the Americans are as bad as the natives. This is com- forting to me, a Britisher who has till now humbly accepted as a truth the fiat of the American upon English manners and customs of doing business. But after a little time spent in earnest study of the Ameri- can in and out of the States, I am beginning to see something of the true inwardness of those texts with which they hang their offices. " This is my busy day." "Get it over." " "Do you see the time ? and " If hot air were motor power you would be exceeding the speed limit." did not come into being because there was no use for them, nor are they hung in just such a position as to catch the eye of the visitor because it is the visitor's habit to state his business in as few words as possible, and get out as quickly as he can. The American 47 A WOMAN arrives at his office at eight-thirty and leaves at six as against the EngHshman's ten to four-thirty or five. And, as far as I can see, both here and anywhere else, the difference between them is, that the American wastes his time in his office, and the Englishman wastes his outside. And if I belonged to a nation that managed somehow to be a nation and could still dig in its garden or play its game of tennis, or walk home through the park before dinner I would distinctly feel I had got the bulge on another nation that could only keep up by sitting in its office from eight-thirty till six, at the mercy of all the hot-airers who made those little axioms a most evident and pressing necessity. At last I have got the hard broom for which I have been waiting so long. What an event that is no one who has not lived in this community can know. And after still more fervent pleadings a male nigger has been lent me to scrub the verandah. He found the broom too heavy. Finally he got a pail of water and began, dressed very suitably for a visit to his girl. I told him to take off his boots. He nearly wept. He would catch cold. I laughed at him, took my own shoes and stockings off, and, up to my ankles in water, started to scrub. I did about ten feet of it before I gave him the broom. He watched me for a while, then despairingly took off his boots, rolled up his trousers and put his hand out for the broom. He would die if he had to, but it would be murder, not 48 THE WILDERNESS suicide. They have the most overpowering fears and anxieties about themselves and their health. While at the same time as the men will lie out in the open, rained upon at one time, baked by the sun the next, and go more then half the time barefoot, they are afraid to get their feet wet. As for the women, with the first drop of rain they swathe their heads in flannel, wear enormous thick flannel vests as hard as boards, and nothing will induce them to put their hands in cold water if they have at any time of the day had them in hot. They might be orchids at the North Pole instead of negroes on their native heath. There seems to be some fatality in my loving. In order to console myself for the lack of companions at home, I took with me when I left New York, seven goldfish and three turtles the size of half-crowns. When the furniture and boxes arrived from England there would be the wherewith to build quite an ex- pensive miniature Japanese garden. In green shaded pools and on sun-warmed rocks the half-crown turtles should sport. And in a winding brook, pebbled to suit, the goldfish should wend their happy way. It was all settled. Out of their apparently healthy but distinctly utilitarian tank-homes at Wanamaker's, I took them with a packet of fish food and many instructions as to their welfare. They would require careful nursing, £ 49 A WOMAN IN but I was ready and willing to give it. All they had to do was to lie back and be waited upon. It is seven days' journey from New York to Colon. The last goldfish died the day we entered Colon Bay. There had been one funeral a day every day from New York. No reason, as far as I could see, unless it was perhaps some injudicious but very kindly meant bread crumbs. And everything was done to take their minds off the daily bereavement. Immediately upon the death of each, the corpse was removed, and fresh water, untainted with any thought of sorrow or substituted. Still there it disease, was was ; every day as the clock struck twenty-four hours, up went the heels of another goldfish. I refused to allow my mind to dwell on my failures and concentrated all my hopes and aspirations on the turtles. They arrived safe and well. Awaiting the build- ing of the garden, I housed them in a shallow china dish of water scattered with pebbles, and with a nice large stone for them to come out and dry themselves on. Assiduously I fed them with morsels of meat on the end of a hat pin. And William, who besides having such a fine business head, is also extraordi- narily clever at catching flies, would snare the delicacies for them every time one presented itself on the inside of the screen. The great art, it seems, lies in the placing yourself in such a position as shall allow you to remain hidden from the fly. Then you either drop from above 50 THE WILDERNESS or else make your hand into a scoop, and seizing the psychological moment, flash the scoop sideways before the fly can say knife. William, I think, must have spent his early life catching flies as an EngUsh boy would have spent his playing cricket, for he never misses one if it's ; and you think an easy thing to do, try it.

Load more