Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
America: Vols. XXV–XXIX. 1876–79.
Plain Language from Truthful James
By Bret Harte (18361902)W
And my language is plain,—
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,—
Which the same I would rise to explain.
And I shall not deny
In regard to the same
What that name might imply;
But his smile it was pensive and childlike,
As I frequent remarked to Bill Nye.
And quite soft was the skies:
Which it might be inferred
That Ah Sin was likewise;
Yet he played it that day upon William
And me in a way I despise.
And Ah Sin took a hand:
It was euchre. The same
He did not understand;
But he smiled as he sat by the table,
With a smile that was childlike and bland.
In a way that I grieve,
And my feelings were shocked
At the state of Nye’s sleeve:
Which was stuffed full of aces and bowers,
And the same with intent to deceive.
By that heathen Chinee,
And the points that he made,
Were quite frightful to see,—
Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me.
And he gazed upon me;
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, “Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor”;
And he went for that heathen Chinee.
I did not take a hand;
But the floor it was strewed
Like the leaves on the strand
With the cards that Ah Sin had been hiding,
In the game “he did not understand.”
He had twenty-four packs,—
Which was coming it strong,
Yet I state but the facts;
And we found on his nails, which were taper,
What is frequent in tapers,—that ’s wax.
And my language is plain,
That for ways that are dark,
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar,—
Which the same I am free to maintain.