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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
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