We spent a delightful evening, and returned to the “North Sea” after dinner, reaching Colon about one o’clock in the morning. An amusing incident of our stay on the Isthmus occurred on our return. One of the commissioners was sick, and for this reason did not attend the dinner. In my business of looking up sanitary matters at Colon I had come to know the Mayor of the town quite well. Much to my surprise I found him at this late hour of the night awaiting our return. He took me aside and told me in a whisper that the Commissioner whom we had left behind sick had appeared on the street most uproariously drunk, had fought the Colon police to a finish, and was at that moment in the Colon jail raising pandemonium. The Mayor said that he had endeavored in every way to keep the matter quiet and protect the honor of the American Commission, but that the Commissioner himself had been so noisy and pugnacious that he feared the matter had gotten pretty well noised about the town. I was, of course, much chagrined at this account of the Commissioner’s conduct. I knew well his reputation in the United States, and knew that he had lived a perfectly correct life for fifty years, enjoying the respect and consideration of the community, and that at home he was known as a sober and abstemious gentleman as far as alcoholic drink was concerned. I took the Chairman of the Commission aside and unfolded to him the astounding story which the Mayor had just confided to me. We got into a carriage with the Mayor and hurried to the jail. As we neared this building our worst fears were confirmed; pandemonium seemed let loose. We could hear our honored Commissioner swearing and shouting, to the great delight and amusement of the crowd outside. We hurried in to see what we could do with our friend. Upon being ushered into the room in which he was raising such an uproar, we found that it was not the Commissioner, but one of our clerks. He had developed delirium tremens as the result of too much French hospitality, and insisted that he was the Commissioner above mentioned. The Mayor was never quite convinced that this was not the case. The Commissioner rather rose in the estimation of the townspeople, as being a jolly good fellow, but the Mayor always thought that he had carried things a little too far for a man occupying such a dignified position. In April, 1904, I was finally ordered to report to the Commission as the chief sanitary officer for the Isthmus. Having been there, we had a very good idea of how great the difficulties would be in getting either supplies or personnel. We therefore requested the Commission to authorize our taking down a certain number of men and a certain quantity of supplies. They authorized our spending $50,000 for these purposes, and this we did, taking the men and supplies with us to the Isthmus early in June, 1904.