I lay listening to the cathedral clock strike the hours and half-hours. Every time the clock struck during the night, the night watchman blew his whistle to awaken people and remind them that he was awake. Chicago policemen wake up their headquarters only. The promptitude of the whistling made one of our doctors think that the whistling was done by the clock, and was to awaken the watchman only.
CHAPTER X
About Town
Early Breakfast—The “Gentleman of the Eggs” Again—How to Eat the Juice of an Orange—Panama Shops—Chinese Silks and Curios—Purchases—Trying to Beat Down a Chinaman’s Price—The Market—Chinatown—Assortment of Smells—Chinese Style—A Large Stock—The Doctor’s Extravagance—Idleness the Cause of Injudicious Buying—Another Lesson in Siestas—The dolce far niente of It—Another Interruption--Nada, Nada!—New Year’s Resolutions—The Usual Visit to the Cable Office—Las Lonely Bovedas—Extension of Sewers to Low Water Line—The Odor Worse than the Poison—The Remedy—The Prison—The Barracks—Goats Versus Cows—Narrow Streets and Ruins—Chicago Again in the Lead—Unserviceable Sidewalks—Rich Food Eaten in the Tropics—The Promenade Concert—Costumes and Customs.
At coffee I found the portly old “Gentleman of the Eggs” in his place at the head of the table, as confident and contented as a successful South American revolutionist. Things were going his way—beefsteak, fried potatoes, camareros and congestion.
Doctor Echeverría came in and showed me how to peel and eat an orange. He thrust a sharp-pronged fork into one end, peeled it with a sharp table knife the same as one pares an apple and began biting into it. After finishing it, all of the fibrous portion remained on the fork and the juice only had been eaten. This is the way a fluid can be eaten. The old gentleman looked askance at the performance as if he considered it a foreign fraud, but did not alarm those who were not looking at him; and everything went well.
After coffee we sent a cablegram to the doctor’s wife, and proceeded to hunt up a Chinese store. All stores in Panama are, in point of size, shops, for although some of them have a frontage of twenty-five feet, in a few instances of fifty feet, they are shallow, the great majority being not more than twenty-five feet deep. Thus the stores as well as the streets are mere bumping places.
The duties on silk and, I believe, on nearly all goods are low. Hence, although scarcely anything is manufactured or made in Panama, the prices are usually moderate. But so many things are imported from the United States that I had to be careful not to buy goods that had been brought from the United States. In such cases I would pay the increased prices resulting from the moderate Panama duties, and then pay the immoderate American duties upon bringing them back. The Chinese silk and curio stores had the usual things that they have in the United States. In addition to this the Chinese kept provision stores of all sizes and grades where they sold groceries, liquors, fruits, dried and canned goods, and other delicacies demanded by their numerous countrymen and native customers.
By way of introduction I bought some feather fans and bronze sea cows. I then called for a skeleton coat. The Chinaman looked at my arms and legs and said that he did not keep skeleton clothes, but had some about my size, and brought out a white shiny silk sack coat for twelve dollars. As I only wanted it for a week’s wear in Panama and a couple of days on the Caribbean Sea, the coat would cost me more than a dollar for each day’s wear. Had I been younger and more enterprising I should have embraced the opportunity of wearing an imported coat that cost a dollar a day while worn, and would have discarded it at the end of ten days in order not to spoil its record; but I allowed the opportunity to pass and called for something cheaper. The Chinaman showed me a similar coat for ten dollars and said:
“Vely cheapee.”