Prowling about Panama

by George A. Miller

It was at a school entertainment that the director, who spoke excellent Spanish, was unavoidably absent, and the writer was pressed into service at the last moment to explain some stereopticon views and make a few announcements. The language was that of a tyro and must have afforded material for much amusement to the cultured parents of the school children. But no one laughed, and as a reporter for a Spanish paper chanced to be on hand, the morning edition stated that the entertainment was a high success and that the views were described in the choicest of classic Spanish while the announcements were delivered with a diction of the purest and highest type. It was the conventional manner of describing any public event.

This temperament leads to oratory as rivers run to the sea. Given a few ideas for a start, and any educated Latin will deliver an extempore oration that suggests weeks of careful preparation. Rounded periods and classic expression mark every polished phrase.

Probably the most perplexing and annoying thing about the North American in the eyes of his southern neighbor is our incessant hurry and rush. We may be millionaires in money but we are hopelessly bankrupt in time. And the South American is both millionaire and philanthropist in time. He always has a surplus and is willing to use it—and his friend's too. Some of our hurrying about is regarded as a great joke. Clayton Sedgwick Cooper quotes a Bengalese of Calcutta as regarding a certain Englishman as "one of the uncomfortable works of God." Such are we of the United States in the eyes of our southern friends.

The formalities of social life are of vast importance to the Panamanian, and they are also important to the North American who wishes to transact any sort of business with officials and educated men of any class. Dress suits and high hats are not to be despised if one is to get on in the capital city. Neither are business and politics to be separated if any business is to be done.

During 1918 the death of President Valdez within a month of the constitutional date of the national election created a situation in which the election board was controlled by one political party and the police department by the other, spelling inevitable trouble. Military authorities on the Canal Zone took a hand and sent over a troop of cavalry to police the city during the election week. At sight of the soldiers panic possessed many women and children, who had been told that the Americans, if they came, would shoot down all persons on the street without warning. A few hours convinced the populace of the error of this widely circulated report, and the election passed peacefully, the party in office winning.

WASHING BY THE RIVER

Panamanian officials are uniformly courteous, kindly, and will go to any reasonable length to grant any proper request, especially if it comes from a friend. I have called on various men in high authority many times on diverse matters and have never failed to be received cordially and given the best of personal treatment. It has occasionally happened, however, that after leaving the official I tried to recall just what he had stated or agreed to do, and had difficulty in finding anything definite.

Perhaps Latin character reaches its highest level in family life. The women of the Latin race are noted for natural grace and comeliness, and in their own homes they give themselves to their husbands and children with a devotion to which some of the club women of northern lands are strangers, as well as their families. Motherhood is a high calling before which all else must give way. The open life of the northern family, with its easy conventions and free hospitality, is largely unknown, but a close and intimate family life is built up essentially stronger in some features than anything found further north. The Spanish home is a very select and secluded affair, into the charmed circle of which only the most intimate friends may enter.

This wife and mother usually knows nothing of her husband's affairs, and has little freedom of the streets or public places. There is none of that comradeship in business interests often found in the States between husband and wife.