our minds should have been sounded only a confused chaotic uproar
like a wrangling within the covers of a polyglot dictionary. Then
suddenly I landed a Russian! It was the final straw. I like to
speak Spanish, I can endure the creaking of Turks attempting to
talk Italian, I can bend an ear to the excruciating "French" of
Martinique negroes, I have boldly faced sputtering Arabs, but I
will NOT run the risk of talking Russian. It was the second and
last case during my census days when I was forced to call for
interpretative assistance.

At best we caught only a small percentage at each table before the
crowd had wolfed and melted away. An odd half dozen more, perhaps,
we found stretched out in the shade under the mess-hall and
neighboring quarters before the imperative screech of the labor-
train whistle ended a scene that must be several times repeated,
and now left us silent and alone, to wander wet and weary to the
nearest white bachelor quarters, there to lie on our backs an hour
or more till the polyglot jumble of words in the back of our heads
had each climbed again to its proper shelf.

Speaking of white bachelor quarters, therein lay the enumerator's
greatest problem. The Spaniard or the Jamaican is in nine cases
out of ten fluently familiar with his companion's antecedents and
pedigree. He can generally furnish all the information the census
department calls for. But it is quite otherwise with the American
bachelor. He may know his room-mate's exact degree of skill at
poker, he probably knows his private opinion of "the Colonel," he
is sure to know his degree of enmity to the prohibition movement;
but he is not at all certain to know his name and rarely indeed
has he the shadow of a notion when and in what particular corner