For though Uncle Sam
may permit individual states to do so, he may not himself openly
abjure before the world his assertion as to the equality of all
men by enacting "Jim Crow" laws.
We were soon off. Settled back in the ample seat of the first real
train I had boarded in months, with the roar of its length over
the smooth and solid road-bed, the deep-voiced, masculine whistle
instead of the painful, puerile screech that had recently assailed
my ear, I all but forgot I was in a foreign land. The fact was
recalled by the passing of the train-guard,--an erect and self-
possessed young American in "Texas" hat, khaki uniform, and
leather leggings, striding along the aisle with a jerking, half-
arrogant swing of the shoulders. So, perhaps, might I too soon be
parading across the Isthmus! It was not, to be sure, exactly the
role I had planned to play on the Zone. I had come rather with the
hope of shouldering a shovel and descending into the canal with
other workmen, that I might some day solemnly raise my right hand
and boast, "I helped dig IT." But that was in the callow days
before I had arrived and learned the awful gulf that separates the
sacred white American from the rest of the Canal Zone world.
Besides, had I not always wanted to be a policeman and twirl a
club and stalk with heavy, law-compelling tread ever since I had
first stared speechless upon one of those noble beings on my first
trip out into the world twenty-one years before?
It was not without effort that I rose in time next morning to
continue on the 6:37 from Corozal across another bit of the Zone.
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