ot guess.
Yet I wonder.

Of nothing Chinese can you be thinking, for you hate
them with an automatic hatred--the hatred of
the well-fed for the starved, of the warlike for
the weak.
When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with
the drawing back of your silken beard, your
black, black beard, from your white teeth.
With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short
gutturals.
You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be
of them you are thinking.

Yet neither do you speak the tongue of the master
whom you serve.
No more do you know of us the "Masters" than you
know of them the "dogs."
We are above you, they below.
And between us you stand, guarding the street, erect
and splendid, lithe and male. Your scarlet turban
frames your neat black head,
And you are thinking.

Or are you?
Perhaps we only are stung with thought.
I wonder.

Shanghai

The Lady of Easy Virtue: An American

_Lotus_,
So they called your name.
Yet the green swelling pod, the fruit-like seeds and
heavy flower, are nothing like to you.
Rather, like a pitcher plant you are, for hope and all
young wings are drowned in you.

Your slim body, here in the cafe, moves brightly in
and out. Green satin, and a dance, white wine
and gleaming laughter, with two nodding earrings--these
are Lotus.
And in the painted eyes cold steel, and on the lips a
vulgar jest;
Hands that fly ever to the coat lapels, familiar to
the wrists and to the hair of men. These too
are Lotus.
And what more--God knows!

You too perhaps were stranded here, like these poor
homesick boys, in this great catch-all where the
white race ends, this grim Shanghai that like a
sieve hangs over filth and loneliness.
You were caught here like these, and who could live,
young and so slender--in Shanghai?
Green satin, and a gleaming throat, and painted eyes
of steel,
Hunter or hunted,
Peace be with you,
_Lotus_!

Shanghai

In the Mixed Court: Shanghai

Two men sit in judgment on their fellows.
Side by side they sit, raised on the pedestal of the law,
at grips with squalor and ignorance.
They are civilization--and they are very grave.

One of them is of my own people, a small man, definite,
hard-featured, an accurate weapon of small
calibre.
Of the other I cannot judge.
He is heavily built, and when he is still the dignity of
the Orient is