I hope I am not giving the impression that I.C.C. hotels are unendurable.  “Stay home”—­which on the Zone means always eat at the same hotel table—­subsidize your waiter and you do moderately well.  But to move thither and yon, as any plain-clothes man must, is unfortunate.  The only difference then is that the next is worse than the last.  Whatever their convictions upon arrival, almost all Americans have come down to paying their waiter the regular blackmail of a dollar a month and setting it down as one of the unavoidable evils of life.  One or two I knew who insisted on sticking to “principles,” and they grew leaner and lanker day by day.

Because of these things many an American employee will be found eating in private restaurants of the ubiquitous Chinaman or the occasional Spaniard, though here he must often pay in cash instead of in futures on his labor—­which are so much cheaper the world over.  It is sad enough to dine on the same old identical round for months.  But how if you were one of those who blew in on the heels of the last Frenchman and have been eating it ever since?  By this time even rat-tails would be a welcome change—­and with genuine socialism there would not even be that escape.  It is said to be this hotel problem as much as the perpetual spring-time of the Zone that so frequently reduces—­with the open connivance of the government—­a building housing forty-eight quiet, harmless bachelors to a four-family residence housing eight and gradually upwards; that wreaks such matrimonious havoc among the white-frocked stenographers who come down to type and remain to cook.

Besides the hotel there is the P.R.R. commissary, the government department stores.  It is likewise laundry, bakery, ice-factory; it makes ice-cream, roasts coffee, sends out refrigerator-cars and a morning supply train to bring your orders right to your door—­oh, yes, it strongly resembles what Bellamy dreamed years ago.  Only, as in the case of the hotel, there seems to be a fly or two in the amber.

The laundry is tolerable—­fancy turning your soiled linen over to a railroad company—­all machine done of course, as everything would be under socialism, and no come-back for the garment that is not hardy enough of constitution to stand the system.  In the stores is little or no shoddy material; in general the stock is the best available.  If a biscuit or a bolt of khaki is better made in England than in the United States the commissary stocks with English goods, which is unexpected broad-mindedness for government management.  But while prices are lower than in Panama or Colon they are every whit as high as in American stores; and most of us know something of the exorbitant profit our private merchants exact, particularly on manufactured goods.  The government claims to run the commissary only to cover cost.  Either that is a crude government joke or there is a colored gentleman esconced in the coal-bin.  Moreover if the commissary hasn’t the stuff you