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.
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