Bret Harte (1839 – 1902)
American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.
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Each lost day has its patron saint!
Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"--the like of which I never heard in all England.
And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,
This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.
He smiled a kind of sickly smile and curled up on the floor
And the subsequent proceedings interested him no more.
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor.
With unpronounceable awful names.
Don't be too quick
To break bad habits: better stick,
Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.
For there be women, fair as she,
Whose verbs and nouns do more agree.
Which I wish to remark,—
And my language is plain,—
That for ways that are dark
And for tricks that are vain,
The heathen Chinee is peculiar.
But, when the goddess' work is done,
The woman's still remains.
With the smile that was childlike and bland.
Well, no offense:
Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled.
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