ipso facto (so runs Zone philosophy) above dishonesty. The
quarters are virtually abandoned during the day. Two negro
janitors dawdle about the building, but they, too, leave it for
two hours at mid-day. Moreover each of the forty-eight or more
occupants probably has several friends or acquaintances or enemies
who may drift in looking for him at any hour of the day or night.
No negro janitor would venture to question a white American's
errand in a house; Panama is below the Mason and Dixon line. In
practice any white American is welcome in any bachelor quarters
and even to a bed, if there is one unoccupied, though he be a
total stranger to all the community. Add to this that the negro
tailor's runner often has permission to come while the owner is
away for suits in need of pressing, that John Chinaman must come
and claw the week's washing out from under the bed where the
"rough-neck" kicked it on Saturday night, that there are a dozen
other legitimate errands that bring persons of varying shades into
the building, and above all that the bachelors themselves, after
the open-hearted old American fashion, have the all but universal
habit of tossing gold and silver, railroad watches and real-estate
bonds, or anything else of whatever value, indifferently on the
first clear corner that presents itself. Precaution is troublesome
and un-American. It seems a fling at the character of your fellow
bachelors--and in the vast majority of Zone cases it would be. But
it is in no sense surprising that among the many thousands that
swarm upon the Isthmus there should be some not averse to
increasing their income by taking advantage of these guileless
habits and bucolic conditions. There are suggestions that a few--
not necessarily whites--make a profession of it. No wonder "our
chief trouble is burglary" and has been ever since the Z. P. can
remember. Summed up, the pay-day gold that has thus faded away is