of information? Little does she know the long prison sentence at
"hard labor" that stares me in the face for any such slip; to say
nothing of my naturally incommunicative disposition. Or is she
ashamed to let ME know the truth?--unaware that all such
information goes in at my ears and down my pencil to the pink card
before me like a message over the wires, leaving no more trace
behind. Surely she must know that I care not a pencil-point
whether she is eighteen or fifty-two, nor remember which one
minute after her screen door has slammed behind me--unless she has
caused me to glance up in wonder at her silvering temples of
thirty-five when she simpers "twenty-two"--and to set her down as
forty to be on the safe side. Oh now, please, ladies, do not
understand me as accusing the American wives of Paraiso in general
of this weakness. The large majority were quite pleasant, frank,
and overflowing with cheery good sense. But the percentage who
were not was far larger than I, who am also an American, was
pleased to find it.

But doubly astonishing were the few cases of lying by proxy. A
"clean-cut," college-graduated civil engineer of thirty-two whom
one would have cited as an example of the best type of American,
gave all data concerning himself in an unimpeachable manner. His
wife was absent. When the question of her age arose he gave it,
with the slightest catch in his voice, as twenty. Now that might
be all very well. Men of thirty-two are occasionally so fortunate
as to marry girls of twenty. But a moment later the gentleman in
question finds himself announcing that his wife has been living on
the Zone with him since 1907; and that she was born in New
England! Thus is he tripped over his own clothes-line. For New
England girls do not marry at fifteen; mother would not let them