“Why, sir,” I said jubilantly, “I just had the time of my life, that’s all. Banquets, highballs and fancy balls enough to drown us and bury us and decorate our graves. The Panamanians spent $25,000 on twenty-five of us in four days, and seven of the twenty-five were from Chicago. Chicago got a third, and probably more. In short, we had a hot time. If you don’t believe it, go to Panama next Christmas and find out.”
After thus beating time for a while longer I got him out. When I had taken the “dessert” with my last patient I felt quite exhausted, for, as I have intimated before, life in the tropics thins the blood and softens the muscles, and thus had diminished my powers of endurance. While there I had not felt the need of good blood and firm muscles, but upon assuming active duties in zero weather I missed them. When, therefore, I started for home I was in a neurasthenic, irritable state of mind. As I passed through the reception-room the sister of the office attendant, who happened to be there, smiled and bowed to me and wanted to know if I had had a pleasant trip.
“What’s that?” I said, less ceremoniously than I intended.
“Did you have a pleasant trip, Doctor?”
“Oh—why certainly. Why not? Do you suppose,” I said gaily, as I backed toward the door, “that I could travel 2,400 miles and spend $25,000 in four days without having a pleasant trip? Just spend $25,000 and travel 2,400 miles in four days and you’ll know what a pleasant trip I had; you’ll have the time of your life. Then every one will ask you if you had a pleasant trip, and you’ll have the time of your life again. Good day.”
And so for several days my life was dominated by this conventionality of polite speech. It would have been much easier to have staid at home than to have gone through what I had, viz., five days of sickness on the S. S. Limón; one night on the seasick Italian steamship; nearly two weeks in the blood-hot city of Panama, dodging mosquitoes and not daring to light the candle in my bedroom, laboriously tucking in the mosquito bar all around every night in the dark, and hiding under it for three hours in the middle of each day; perspiring continuously; bathing in a washbowl; forced to eat and drink two banquets daily, that kept me thin; treating and being treated to highballs half a dozen times daily, that made me sick; being cheated by Chinamen, that made me ashamed; having to see a brave rooster murdered and a tame bull tortured and assassinated; spending a week stowed away in the S. S. Brighton, while rocked by the trade-winds, tossed by a “norther” and bedeviled by insomnia; becalmed for twelve hours between New Orleans and Chicago; losing a bunch of keys, two umbrellas, five handkerchiefs, my railroad ticket, a ten-dollar bill and a necktie fastener; being caught fifty-five times in the rain and once in the water,—and then having to write a book about it. But to be asked forty times a day for forty days, “Did you have a pleasant trip?” cured me of all desire for travel. Travel and travail are of the same origin. The next time I want to go to Panama I will stay at home and read about it, and then talk about it. Let others who care to go, read my book instead. The book isn’t half as bad as the trip, and nobody will ask them about it, and thus they will not be obliged to tell lies about it. In order to clear my conscience for all time, I formulated an answer that I chose not to consider a lie. I replied to everybody thus, “Pleasant trip? Why, I had the time of my life. Read my book about it—’tis just like it.”
But even the repetition of the formula became as nauseating as forty squabs (or squalls) in forty days, and I sometimes made myself ridiculous by inventing uncompromising variations. But finally I learned to be patient, and now feel that my trip to the tropics was worth while, for it finished the development of my character. I have become a man of patience, and say nothing whenever I feel as if I ought to talk back.
I met Doctor Brower on the street one day and asked him if he had had a pleasant trip. He stopped breathing for a second and looked at me queerly, but finally smiled.
“Byford, do you know, I have heard that remark before.”
“Shake!” said I. “Misery loves company. I suppose that you have become a confirmed liar by this time, and are writing a text-book full of lies and bad advice.”