removed by a Chicago wrecking company.

Then all the town must be done again--"back calls." By this time so
wide and varied was my acquaintance in Empire that wenches withdrew a
dripping hand from their tubs to wave at me with a sympathetic giggle,
and piccaninnies ran out to meet me as I returned in quest of one
missing inmate in a house of fifty. For the few laborers still uncaught
I took to coming after dark. But West Indians rarely own lamps, not
even the brass tax-numbers above the doors were visible, and as for a
negro in the dark--

Absurd rumors had begun early to circulate among the darker brethren.
In all negrodom the conviction became general that this individual
detailed catechising and house-branding was really a government scheme
to get lists of persons due for deportation, either for lack of work as
the canal neared completion or for looseness of marital relations.
Hardly a tenement did I enter but laughing voices bandied back and
forth and there echoed and reechoed through the building such remarks
as:

"Well, dey gon' sen' us home, Penelope," or "Yo an' Percival better
hurry up an' git married, Ambrosia."

Several dusky females regularly ran away whenever I approached; one at
least I came a-seeking in vain nine times, and found her the tenth
behind a garbage barrel. Many fancied the secret marks on the
"enumerated" tag--date, and initials of the enumerator--were intimately
concerned with their fate. So strong is the fear of the law imbued by
the Zone Police that they dared not tear down the dreaded placard, but
would sometimes sit staring at it for hours striving to penetrate its
secret or exorcise away its power of evil, and now and then some bolder
spirit ventured out--at midnight--with a pencil and put tails and extra
flourishes on the penciled letters in the hope of disguising them
against the fatal day.

Except for the chaos of nationalities and types on the Zone,
enumerating would have become more than monotonous. But the enumerated
took care to break the monotony. There was the wealth of nomenclature
for instance. What more striking than a shining-black waiter strutting
proudly about under the name of Levi McCarthy? There was no necessity
of asking Beresford Plantaganet if he were a British subject. Naturally
the mother of Hazarmaneth Cumberbath Smith, baptized that very week,
had to claw out the family Bible from among the bed-clothes and look up
the name on the fly-leaf.

To the enumer