Yet the cards they were stocked 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.
But the hands that were played 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.
Then I looked up at Nye, 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.
In the scene that ensued 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."
In his sleeves, which were long, 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.
Which is why I remark, 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.
THE SOCIETY UPON THE STANISLAUS
I reside at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
I am not up to small deceit or any sinful games;
And I'll tell in simple language what I know about the row That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
But first I would remark, that it is not a proper plan For any scientific gent to whale his fellow-man, And, if a member don't agree with his peculiar whim, To lay for that same member for to "put a head" on him.
Now nothing could be finer or more beautiful to see Than the first six months' proceedings of that same Society, Till Brown of Calaveras brought a lot of fossil bones That he found within a tunnel near the tenement of Jones.
Then Brown he read a paper, and he reconstructed there, From those same bones, an animal that was extremely rare;
And Jones then asked the Chair for a suspension of the rules, Till he could prove that those same bones was one of his lost mules.
Then Brown he smiled a bitter smile, and said he was at fault, It seemed he had been trespassing on Jones's family vault;
He was a most sarcastic man, this quiet Mr. Brown, And on several occasions he had cleaned out the town.
Now I hold it is not decent for a scientific gent To say another is an ass,--at least, to all intent;
Nor should the individual who happens to be meant Reply by heaving rocks at him, to any great extent.
Then Abner Dean of Angel's raised a point of order, when A chunk of old red sandstone took him in the abdomen, And he smiled a kind of sickly smile, and curled up on the floor, And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
For, in less time than I write it, every member did engage In a warfare with the remnants of a palaeozoic age;
And the way they heaved those fossils in their anger was a sin, Till the skull of an old mammoth caved the head of Thompson in.
And this is all I have to say of these improper games, For I live at Table Mountain, and my name is Truthful James;
And I've told in simple language what I know about the row That broke up our Society upon the Stanislow.
LUKE
(IN THE COLORADO PARK, 1873)
Wot's that you're readin'?--a novel? A novel!--well, darn my skin!
You a man grown and bearded and histin' such stuff ez that in--Stuff about gals and their sweethearts! No wonder you're thin ez a knife.
Look at me--clar two hundred--and never read one in my life!
That's my opinion o' novels. And ez to their lyin' round here, They belong to the Jedge's daughter--the Jedge who came up last year On account of his lungs and the mountains and the balsam o' pine and fir;
And his daughter--well, she read novels, and that's what's the matter with her.
Yet she was sweet on the Jedge, and stuck by him day and night, Alone in the cabin up 'yer--till she grew like a ghost, all white.
She wus only a slip of a thing, ez light and ez up and away Ez rifle smoke blown through the woods, but she wasn't my kind--no way!
Speakin' o' gals, d'ye mind that house ez you rise the hill, A mile and a half from White's, and jist above Mattingly's mill?
You do? Well now THAR's a gal! What! you saw her? Oh, come now, thar! quit!
She was only bedevlin' you boys, for to me she don't cotton one bit.
Now she's what I call a gal--ez pretty and plump ez a quail;
Teeth ez white ez a hound's, and they'd go through a ten-penny nail;
Eyes that kin snap like a cap. So she asked to know "whar I was hid?"
She did! Oh, it's jist like her sass, for she's peart ez a Katydid.
But what was I talking of?--Oh! the Jedge and his daughter--she read Novels the whole day long, and I reckon she read them abed;
And sometimes she read them out loud to the Jedge on the porch where he sat, And 'twas how "Lord Augustus" said this, and how "Lady Blanche" she said that.
But the sickest of all that I heerd was a yarn thet they read 'bout a chap, "Leather-stocking" by name, and a hunter chock full o' the greenest o' sap;
And they asked me to hear, but I says, "Miss Mabel, not any for me;
When I likes I kin sling my own lies, and thet chap and I shouldn't agree."
Yet somehow or other that gal allus said that I brought her to mind Of folks about whom she had read, or suthin belike of thet kind, And thar warn't no end o' the names that she give me thet summer up here--"Robin Hood," "Leather-stocking" "Rob Roy,"--Oh, I tell you, the critter was queer!
And yet, ef she hadn't been spiled, she was harmless enough in her way;
She could jabber in French to her dad, and they said that she knew how to play;
And she worked me that shot-pouch up thar, which the man doesn't live ez kin use;
And slippers--you see 'em down 'yer--ez would cradle an Injin's papoose.
Yet along o' them novels, you see, she was wastin' and mopin' away, And then she got shy with her tongue, and at last she had nothin' to say;
And whenever I happened around, her face it was hid by a book, And it warn't till the day she left that she give me ez much ez a look.
