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212 the President wishes to go to the theater, all he has to do is to walk down a short corridor running directly from his apartments to his official box.

Over on the other side of the city, just across the street from Ancon, stands the new National Institute, that is to be the university and normal school of Panama. At present, its pupils have not advanced beyond the primary grades, which speaks eloquently of the lack of public education under the old régime, and the determination of the Panamanians that their children shall not grow up in ignorance.

Some of the other "improvements" the Panamanians have made are, unfortunately, in much worse taste. They have painted the time-mellowed cathedral and most of the churches—the oldest of which was built in 1688—until they look like brand-new suburban villas; they have clapped a tin roof over the moss-grown tiles of the lovely little chapel on Taboga Island, turned the ruined Jesuit monastery into an apartment-house, and are now proposing to tear down what is left of the Church of San Domingo, with its famous earthquake-defying "flat arch," that "is the wonder of every visiting engineer and architect. Even if they care nothing for the monuments of their own past, any European hotel-keeper could tell the Panamanians that they would make more money by exhibiting their ruins to American tourists than by tearing them down.

Almost everybody you meet on the streets of Panama wears American ready-made clothing, and there is almost nothing in the stores but cheap American goods. Every year a few ship loads of German-made curios and