In fact "Shorty" had come to that point where he would
rather be caught in church than found dead without a bottle on
him, and arriving home overflowing with joy about midnight slept
away most of the day in 47 that he might spend as much of the
night as the early closing laws of the Zone permitted at the
amusement headquarters of Empire.
With these few hints of the life that raged beneath the roof of 47
it may perhaps be comprehensible, without going into detail, why I
came to contemplate a change of quarters. I detest a kicker. I
have small use for any but the man who will take his allotted
share with the rest of the world without either whining or
snarling. Yet when an official government census enumerator falls
asleep on the edge of a tenement washtub with a question dead on
his lips, or solemnly sets down a crow-black Jamaican as "white,"
it is Uncle Sam who is suffering and time for correction.
But it is one thing for a Canal Zone employee to resolve to move,
and quite another to carry out that resolution. Nero was a meek,
unassertive, submissive, tractable little chap, keenly sensible to
the sufferings of his fellows, compared with a Zone quartermaster.
So the first time I ventured to push open the screen door next to
the post office I was grateful to escape unmaimed. But at last,
when I had done a whole month's penance in 47, I resorted to
strategy.
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