Life in Panama City is mainly outdoor life, in the dry season at any rate, and even in the wet season the Panamanians move about in the open like a lot of damp and discontented flies. The almost continuous line of balconies shields the sidewalks from the rain, and nobody in Panama is too busy to stop a half hour or so at street crossings for the downpour to lessen. Sunday nights the band of the Republic plays in the Plaza, and there all the people of the town congregate to listen to the music, promenade and chat. It is the scene of that curious Latin-American courtship which consists of following the adored one with appealing eyes, but never by any possibility speaking to her. The procession of girls and women is worth watching, whether the eyes be adoring or not, and the costumes have a sort of strangeness befitting the scene. The practice has grown up of leaving the outer walk for the negro and negroid people, the inner paths being kept for the whites--but as the walks merge into each other so too do the colors. If one wearies of the moving crowds without, a step will bring him into the patio of the Hotel Centrale where an excellent orchestra plays, and a gathering chiefly native sips tropical drinks and disposes of the political issues of the day with much oratory and gesticulation. [Illustration: ON PANAMA’S BATHING BEACH] As you make your way back to the hotel at night--if it is after eleven, the driver will lawfully charge you twenty cents--you will vainly try to recall any North American town of 40,000 people which can present so many objects of interests to the visitor, and a spectacle of social life so varied, so cosmopolitan and so pleasing. [Illustration: _Photo by Underwood & Underwood_ QUARANTINE STATION AT PACIFIC ENTRANCE TO CANAL]