I hope I am not giving the impression that I.C.C. hotels are unendurable. "Stay home"--which on the Zone means always eat at the same hotel table--subsidize your waiter and you do moderately well. But to move thither and yon, as any plain-clothes man must, is unfortunate. The only difference then is that the next is worse than the last. Whatever their convictions upon arrival, almost all Americans have come down to paying their waiter the regular blackmail of a dollar a month and setting it down as one of the unavoidable evils of life. One or two I knew who insisted on sticking to "principles," and they grew leaner and lanker day by day. Because of these things many an American employee will be found eating in private restaurants of the ubiquitous Chinaman or the occasional Spaniard, though here he must often pay in cash instead of in futures on his labor--which are so much cheaper the world over. It is sad enough to dine on the same old identical round for months. But how if you were one of those who blew in on the heels of the last Frenchman and have been eating it ever since? By this time even rat-tails would be a welcome change--and with genuine socialism there would not even be that escape. It is said to be this hotel problem as much as the perpetual spring-time of the Zone that so frequently reduces--with the open connivance of the government--a building housing forty-eight quiet, harmless bachelors to a four-family residence housing eight and gradually upwards; that wreaks such matrimonious havoc among the white-frocked stenographers who come down to type and remain to cook. Besides the hotel there is the P.R.R. commissary, the government department stores. It is likewise laundry, bakery, ice-factory; it makes ice-cream, roasts coffee, sends out refrigerator-cars and a morning supply train to bring your orders right to your door--oh, yes, it strongly resembles what Bellamy dreamed years ago. Only, as in the case of the hotel, there seems to be a fly or two in the amber.