Read Ebook: To Panama and back by Byford Henry T Henry Turman

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Ebook has 676 lines and 71880 words, and 14 pages

The formula was effective, for she stared at me with an expression of petticoat dignity and pop-eyed wonder which said plainer than words, "There is no fool like an old fool," and walked out. She must have thought that changing garments was a public ceremony, like snoring and seasickness. It was the last time I was caught with my door unlocked.

I learned that on Thursday evenings from eight to ten o'clock a public concert was given in the open air at Plaza Santa Ana, and one on Sunday evenings in the Parque del Catedral in front of our hotel. On other evenings there were about three things for the Panamanians to choose between, viz., to stay at home, undress and keep cool; to go to one of the clubs and play cards; or to lounge about the hotel and talk and drink alcoholic liquors or syrupy soft drinks at regular intervals. I met Doctor Cook of Panama; Doctor Calvo, the secretary of the Panamanian Medical Congress; Doctor Tomaselli, one of the busiest of the local practitioners, and other physicians, as well as a few non-professional citizens, and noticed that these physicians, as well as a few unprofessional citizens, avoided the barroom. They usually remained in the hotel corridor and did not remain long. Nearly all of the temperance men, however, drank soft drinks, and they were real men as far as externals indicated.

About nine o'clock Doctor Echeverr?a went out to call upon some friends, and I went across the street into the park and cooled off. The mosquitoes soon began to congregate, however, and I sneaked up to my bedroom, escaping the argus-eyed bell boy and bully girl. I locked the door quickly, undressed in the dark and after carefully tucking in the edges of the mosquito bar, crawled under it, thinking of Bryant's stanzas addressed to the mosquito.

Beneath the rushes was thy cradle swung, And when at length thy gauzy wings grew strong, Abroad to gentle airs their folds were flung, Rose in the sky, and bore thee soft along. The south wind breathed to waft thee on thy way And danced and shone beneath the billowy bay.

Calm rose afar the city spires, and thence Came the deep murmur of its throngs of men, And as its grateful odors met thy sense, They seemed the perfumes of thy native fen. Fair lay its crowded streets, and at the sight Thy tiny song grew shriller with delight.

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.

About Town

Doctor Echeverr?a 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.

"Vely cheapee."

"More cheapee," I said.

He showed me one for eight dollars.

"Still more cheapee, much more cheapee."

He then brought out one for three dollars that looked the same to me, and would catch the Panama dust and filter the Caribbean showers just as faithfully as if I paid twelve dollars for it. I gave him a five-dollar bill and received seven dollars back. I then spied a beautiful piece of silk embroidery and drawn-work about as wide as a door mat and a little longer. I guessed it to be a bureau cover but called it a door mat, for short.

"How muchee?" I asked.

"Eight dollah."

"No put him out doah. Keep him in house."

"No towel. Put him on table," interrupted the Chinaman, with a trace of alteration in the tone of his voice.

"Oh, a napkin? Why, every time I'd wipe my mouthee the soupee would come through these confounded holes on my hands. You must obliterate them if you wish to sell him. He's a regular skeleton."

"Not for eatee--for pollah table, for buleau--lookee pletty."

"Oh, a sort of tidy for the bureau. But these holes spoil him, I say. The dirt would show right through him. Here, I'll give you six dollah for him. Quickee--comee--bargain--cashee--hoop lah!" I tried to carry the bargain by storm.

The Chinaman could not deny that dirt would show through the drawn-work. He looked perplexed and human, but his speech had the sound of a talking machine.

"Sem dollah ninety-fye cent."

"Sew up the holes," I said, "and I'll give it. Nobody'll ever buy him full of holes. Why he couldn't hold water, he wouldn't even hold molasses. Here's your six dollah, last chancee."

"Bully hole! Vela fine hole! Sem dollah ninety-fye cent. Allee hole flee in bahgain." As he said this his words became animated, but his face was like yellow wax.

"No fleas or flea holes in mine. You'll never sell him to a Yankee with those flea holes in him. Goodbye!"

He eyed me with patient disgust and put away his finery. As I went out he said, "Bettee fye dollah sell him to-mollah."

I knew that the piece was worth eight dollars in Colombian money, but I didn't like to give in, and thought it quite as well to return another time and buy it. But when I did return three days later the Chinaman pretended that the bureau cover was gone, thinking probably that I wanted to claim the five dollars that he had offered to bet. He did not seem anxious to sell me anything. But I had taken a fancy to the cover and wanted it. I offered him eight dollah and fye cent, but he said:

"Allee gone."

I offered him nine dollah.

"Allee gone."

I offered him ten dollah.

"Allee gone."

So I also went, cured of my conceit as a shopper and business man. I had the best of the bargain, however, for the cover didn't cost me anything. In my subsequent shopping I soon learned that the amount a Chinaman would throw off was so insignificant that it was not worth while to ask it. In fact, it is a good thing to offer him five cents more than he asks to make him jump about and show his goods with more zeal. As we passed out I noticed that the doctor had bought several things of considerable value for his wife.

We then sauntered leisurely down to the street that skirted the seashore, passing the market on our way. The market was a large fenced, rectangular area with a galvanized iron roof. It projected over the sea wall, giving opportunity for the disposal of all dirt by merely throwing it out, supposing, of course, that it were possible to get rid of all of the dirt in the place. It was much better constructed and arranged than the market at Col?n, and was well supplied with dirty counters and dirty booths where dirty Chinamen, dirty negroes and dirty mestizos sold dirty fruit, dirty fish, dirty vegetables, etc., all of which should have gone over the sea wall instead of over the palate.

Arriving at the end of the street where it was cut off by an inward curve of the shore line, we turned at right angles to the left into a street about a quarter of a mile long and were, commercially speaking, in Chinatown. The ground-floor front of many of the houses were little Chinese stores, and most of the inhabitants that we saw were Chinese. And before we had finished our walk along the shore, through the market and up this street, we were prepared to endorse the saying that Panama had a separate smell for every turn of the head. A blind man could soon learn to find his way around easily and unerringly.

Up near the main street, where our little street ended, we came to a large, clean-looking Chinese silk and dry-goods store with an imposing entrance. A private carriage was standing in front of it, although upon entering we did not find any one who looked as if he or she had ever possessed or even driven in a carriage. Indeed, on two other occasions I saw a carriage, presumably the same one, in the same place, but never discovered a possible owner shopping there. Hence I inferred that the carriage belonged to the establishment, and was kept there to impress strangers by making them believe that rich customers frequented the place. The store had two front rooms, a main room for all sorts of articles, and a smaller one for silk. We went into the silk room where we found a beautiful display of a costly embroidered silk in the show-cases, and in innumerable pasteboard boxes on shelves reaching almost up to the ceiling.

The proprietor, who waited upon us, was a plump, handsome, courteous, intelligent and exceedingly dignified Chinaman. When Chinamen grow fat they often become good looking; those that remain thin remain ugly, like the rest of us. He showed us all sorts of finery, and Doctor Echeverr?a let himself out. Whenever the doctor saw silks and embroidery and a Chinaman he thought of his wife, and whenever he thought of his wife he thought of silks and embroidery and Chinamen. In Costa Rica the tariff is very high on silks, and the market is probably not good. We examined many things and made the Chinaman send for more goods from his store-rooms. The doctor wasted no time talking, but bought freely: scarfs, shawls, fans, waists, kimonas, doilies, table covers, etc., for his wife, and handkerchiefs, neckties, etc., for himself.

But this was not all, for we made other visits.

Finally one day he opened his mouth upon the subject and said, "I'm buying too much. I must keep away from these stores."

I thought so too, and wondered how he would find room enough in his trunks for all of the goods, and what the Costa Rica custom officers would do to him. I have since also been curious to know if his wife, after seeing these things, told him, as my wife told me when I presented my purchases, that she could have bought the same at home just as cheaply, and could have selected things she wanted. My wife would have perhaps obtained more at home for the money, but I would not have gotten the romance out of it. I needed the experience. A little chivalry toward one's wife is worth more than money.

At home I never enter Chinese shops. Being busy, and therefore in a normal mental state, I act rationally and do not buy Chinese silks and jimcracks. But in Panama I had nothing useful to do, and was therefore apt to do things I should not have done. When the mind is preoccupied with buying stocks one buys them more or less freely and precipitately; when it is preoccupied with buying Chinese silks one is apt to buy more than one's wife needs or wants.

The shrewd insurance agents, book agents, art venders and irresponsible promoters take advantage of this fact at home where you can not escape them. They take up so much of your time and talk so much about insurance, books, pictures or investments that they communicate to you their own paid-for enthusiasm on the subject. They hammer it into your brain cells by prolonged and repeated nerve impressions until the brain cells are temporarily modified to reproduce the impression involuntarily, so that "insure, insure," or "buy, buy," is continually running through your mind. You are hypnotized. The only way to determine whether you want an insurance policy or a book or a picture or a fortune from the agent or promoter, is to get away from him or her for forty-eight hours, and sleep over the problem twice. The impressions of the agent's sonorous or perhaps insinuating voice will then have become weakened, and you will find that you do not want either an insurance policy, a book, a picture or a gold mine.

Finally, however, at the end of an hour and a half by the cathedral clock, twelve hours by the hour-glass in my brain, I seemed to be well done, and slowly sizzled off into a simulated sunstroke, only to be awakened as on the day before by those knockout blows on my door. I aroused myself and saw the bell boy peeking in.

But it was still too hot to keep clothes on, and I had to crawl into my mosquito cage and make up my mind to stay there until the three o'clock breeze made itself felt. As the new year was only two days off, I passed the time making New Year's resolutions. I made about a hundred, but could only remember a dozen or so of them afterward. I resolved:

Not to return to Panama until a Yankee hotel had reconstructed the country.

Not to personally undertake the reformation of the tropics.

Not to train the servants of aliens.

Not to begin by getting hot when I wanted to keep cool.

Not to be a conqueror.

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