r-tired carriages roll constantly by along Uncle Sam's macadam,
amid the jingling of their musical bells. Every one takes a carriage in
Panama. Any man can afford ten cents even if he has no expense account;
besides he runs no risk of being overcharged, which is a greater
advantage than the cost. 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. Then frequent trains,
unknown during the week, begin with the setting of the sun to disgorge
Americans of all grades and sizes through the clicking turnstiles into
the arms of gesticulating hackmen, some to squirm away afoot between
the carriages, all to be swallowed up within ten minutes in the great
sea of "colored" people. So that, large as may be each train-load,
white American faces are so rare on Panama streets that one
involuntarily glances at each that passes in the throng.

It is the "gum-shoe's" duty to know and be unknown in as many places as
possible. Wherefore on such nights, whatever his choice, he drifts
early down by the "Normandie" and on into the "Pana-zone" to see who is
out, and why. In the latter emporium he adds a bottle of beer to his
expense account, endures for a few moments the bawling above the scream
of the piano of two Americans of Palestinian antecedents, admires some
local hero, like "Baldy" for instance, who is credited with doing what
Napoleon could not do, and floats on, perhaps to screw up his courage
and venture into the thinly-clad Teatro Apolo. He who knows where to
look, or was born under a lucky star, may even see on these merry
evenings a big Marine from Bas Obispo or a burly soldier of the Tenth
howling some joyful song with six or seven little "Spig" policemen
climbing about on his frame. At such times everything but real blood,
flows in Panama. Her history runs that way. On the day she won her
independence from Spain it is said the General in Chief cut his finger
on a wine glass. The day she won it from Colombia there was a Chinaman
killed--but every one agrees that was due to the celestial's criminal
carelessness.

Down at the quieter end of the city are "Las Bovedas," that curving
sea-wall Phil