D, who is a quartermaster at $225, may be on "How-are-
you-old-man?" terms with G, who is a station agent and draws $175.
But Mrs. D never thinks of calling on Mrs. G socially. H and J,
who are engineer and cranemen respectively on the same steam-
shovel, are probably "Hank" and "Jim" to each other, but Mrs. H
would be horrified to find herself at the same dance with Mrs. J.
Mrs. X, whose husband is a foreman at $165, and whose dining table
is a full six inches longer and whose ice-box will hold one more
cold-storage chicken, would not think of sitting in at bridge with
Mrs. Y, whose husband gets $150. As for being black, or any tint
but pure "white"! Even an Englishman, though he may eat in the
same hotel if his skin is not too tanned, is accepted on staring
suffrance. As for the man whose skin is a bit dull, he might sit
on the steps of an I. C. C. hotel with dollars dribbling out of
his pockets until he starved to death--and he would be duly buried
in the particular grave to which his color entitled him. A real
American place is the Zone, with outward democracy and inward
caste, an unenthusiastic and afraid-to-break-the-conventions place
in play, and the opposite at work.
Yet with it all it is a good place in which to live. There you
have always summer, jungled hills to look on by day and moonlight,
and to roam in on Sunday--unless you are a policeman seven days a
week.
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