Droll Stories of Isthmian Life
9781465685896
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Nine years have passed since the ship which brought me from New York to Panama pulled out of its dock at the foot of Twenty-seventh Street. It was a bitter cold day in February and the great “Iron City” appeared very grey and forbidding as I took a last look at it before going below. A glance at my fellow passengers revealed to me a motley crowd. A number of tourists were on board bound for West Indian ports, for at that time none of them would have dreamed of stopping off at Panama, and among them were to be found the young and handsome, the old and ugly, the lame, the halt and the blind. There were more than a hundred artisans and clerks bound for the Panama Canal. There were several trained nurses for the American hospitals on the Canal Zone, several mining engineers who were on their way to New Mexico, to Peru, and a millionaire, also from New Mexico, who, to use his own words, “owned the whole engineering outfit.” There was also a well-known United States Army surgeon, his wife, and the wives of several doctors who were already on the Isthmus. In addition, there were several newspaper men, three San Blas Indians, a general, an admiral, a Panamanian, who subsequently became President of Panama, and lastly myself. As my readers may imagine, the passengers were more or less divided. The medical ladies felt themselves of such high degree in the profession as to positively refuse to occupy state-rooms in that part of the ship where the nurses had been assigned. They refused to eat at the same table with them, and never, by any chance, would they sit in company. The general and the admiral were the most democratic persons on board, and divided their time equally among us all. It was a delightful trip. Every night we assembled in the waist of the ship and danced to the music of two violins under rhythm of the waves. The general and the admiral looked on approvingly and forgot their dignity to so great an extent as to keep time to the music with their feet, as on-lookers are apt to do in forgetfulness when they are lifted above their every-day surroundings by strains of sweet music. The poor surgeon looked longingly toward the way we made merry, but he was too hemmed in by conventionalities to join us, and he feared his thin-voiced little wife, who was, as Charles Dickens would say, in an interesting condition, and who ruled him with a rod of iron. The ladies of his atmosphere lowered their eyes in token of disapproval whenever he happened to venture in our midst, and on us they bestowed black looks. But we didn’t care; we had music, good fellowship, laughter, love and tropical moonlight, and, being a mixed assembly, we were carrying out to the letter that spirit of delightful democracy which is the proudest boast of the good old U. S. A.
