where we spend our vacations. They have wars and politics and
theatres and divorces out there somewhere, but we don't care.
We've lost step with the world, we've dropped out. When the
newspapers come, the first thing we look for is the Panama news.
We're obsessed by this job. Even the women and the children feel
it--you'll feel it as soon as you become a cog in the machine.
Polite conversation at dinner is limited to tons of rock and yards
of concrete. Oh, but I'm tired of this concrete talk."

"Try the abstract for a change."

"It's interesting at first, then it gets tiresome. Lord! It's
fierce."

"The work, too?"

"Everything! Every day you do the same thing; every day you see
the same faces, hear the same talk; even the breeze blows from the
same direction all the time, and the temperature stays at the same
mark winter and summer. Every time you go out you see the same
coach-drivers, the same Spiggoty policemen leaning against the
same things; every time you come in you eat the same food, drink
the same liquor, sit in the same chair, and talk about the same
topics. Everything runs too smoothly. The weather is too damned
nice. The thermometer lacks originality. We're too comfortable.
Climate like that gets on a white man's nerves; he needs physical
discomfort to make him contented. I'd give a forty-dollar dog to
be good and cold and freeze my nose. Why, Doctor Gorgas has made
us so sanitary that we can't even get sick. I'd hail an epidemic
as a friend.