But the percentage who
were not was far larger than I, who am also an American, was
pleased to find it.
But doubly astonishing were the few cases of lying by proxy. A
"clean-cut," college-graduated civil engineer of thirty-two whom
one would have cited as an example of the best type of American,
gave all data concerning himself in an unimpeachable manner. His
wife was absent. When the question of her age arose he gave it,
with the slightest catch in his voice, as twenty. Now that might
be all very well. Men of thirty-two are occasionally so fortunate
as to marry girls of twenty. But a moment later the gentleman in
question finds himself announcing that his wife has been living on
the Zone with him since 1907; and that she was born in New
England! Thus is he tripped over his own clothes-line. For New
England girls do not marry at fifteen; mother would not let them
even if they would.
I, too, had gradually worked my way high up among the nondescript
cabins on the upper rim of Paraiso that seem on the very verge of
pitching headlong into the noisy, smoky canal far below with the
jar of the next explosion, when one sunny mid-afternoon I caught
sight of Renson dejectedly trudging down across what might be
called the "Maiden" of Paraiso, back of the two-story lodge-hall.
I took leave of my ebony hostess and descended.
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