The day was pleasant and cool for Panama, and quite endurable in the early morning. We wandered about the grounds for a while examining the tropical trees and telling each other all about them. Then we took photographs of ourselves under trees and talked and watched the preparations for the breakfast on the veranda. Some one asked me to go up and look at the house. I did so but only got as far as the veranda, for I noticed a corner room opening on it that was crowded with fellow congresistas; and after I had succeeded in crowding in saw what would have made Milwaukee and Louisville glad at heart if they had been there. But neither of them were there in the flesh. There was beer, whiskey and White Rock water enough to overcome the drouth of a German regiment or the American army. It seemed a pity that some one from Milwaukee was not there to help us out, for there was a heaping hogshead full of Blue Label beer in quart bottles, and not a bottle was opened that day; there were two hundred bottles of White Rock water, and only fifty were opened; there were a dozen quart bottles of whiskey and only ten were drunk.
CLUB HOUSE ON THE SABANAS
Table Being Set for Our Banquet Breakfast
Santos Jorge’s band of thirty vigorous music-makers was there to give tone and tune to the occasion and did its best to rouse up and intoxicate us with martial and patriotic pieces played at frequent intervals. Mr. Santos Jorge, who was the leader of the band and the almost constant companion of the medical congressmen, was the most prominent musician in the republic. He had been in Panama thirteen years and was the director of the Panama Conservatory of Music. He had been a student of the Madrid Conservatory and took a prize when he graduated. The Himno Istmeno, or Panama National Hymn, is one of his compositions and seemed to compare favorably with the national airs of other countries. His band was made up of whites, negroes and half-breeds, who were all well trained and played well, although a trifle too staccato and fortissimo for our anti-emotional Anglo-Saxon temperament.
As the slight effect of the early coffee and rolls upon our premature emptiness had worn off by ten o’clock, and there were no more trees or houses on the place to explain and explore, and no new subjects for conversation, we hovered around the veranda listening to music and drinking White Rock for an appetite. After having our official picture taken for the benefit of medical history, we sat down to breakfast.
The tables were spread for a hundred and there were only about forty of us, including Panamanians; but as our emptiness grew our courage developed, and each of us laid up enough for a rainy day. The difference between this breakfast, sent by the Washington Hotel from Colón, and the cold bread and bitter coffee breakfast eaten and execrated at the Hotel Centrál a few hours before, was freely expressed in feminine English, which was loud in praise of Washington and in condemnation of Gran Centrál.
We returned to Panama at two o’clock, and occupied our time from three to six with the reading and discussion of monographs on surgery and gynecology, to the great satisfaction and entertainment of the readers and talkers.
THE CONGRESS WAITING FOR LUNCH