“I know a little about railroading.”

“So much the better.  There’s a big railroad man by your name in the States.  Are you related?”

“I believe so,” Kirk answered, quietly.  “Go ahead with the lesson.”

“The Canal Zone is a strip of land ten miles wide running across the Isthmus—­really an American colony, you know, for we govern it, police it, and all that.  As for the work itself, well, the fellows at the two ends of the Canal are dredging night and day to complete their part, the lock-builders are laying concrete like mad to get their share done first, the chaps in the big cut are boring through the hills like moles and breaking steam-shovel records every week, while we railroad men take care of the whole shooting-match.  Of course, there are other departments—­sanitary, engineering, commissary, and so forth—­all doing their share; but that is the general scheme.  Everybody is trying to break records.  We don’t think of anything except our own business.  Each fellow believes the fate of the Canal depends upon him.  We’ve lost interest in everything except this ditch, and while we realize that there is such a place as home, it has become merely a spot 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.