It was August the third;

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.

Which we had a small game,
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 the smile that was childlike and bland.

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.

As I sit at my desk by the window, when the garden with dew is wet,

On the morning incense rises the breath of the mignonette, Laden with tender memories of thirty years ago,

When she gave me her worthless promise, and we loved each other so,

Till her tough old worldly mother let her maiden charms be sold To a miser, as hard and yellow as his hoard of shining gold. As in Central Park I met them on their cheerful morning ride, As she snarled at her henpecked husband who was crouching by her side,

I thought in the dust of the pathway, "I have the best of you yet!"

Far better the dream of a fadeless love in the breath of the mignonette,

And little Alice and Mabel, and the children that might have been, Come dancing out on the paper at a twirl of the magic pen,

Not a horrid boy among them, but a bevy of little girls

With great brown eyes, love-shining, 'mid a halo of golden curls. They never grow old or naughty; and in them I fail to see The slightest fault or taint of sin which could have been charged