Achmed Abdullah

“ Tsing Yat, the head of his clan, and Mrs. Levinsky.
The former would listen politely when his young cousin came to him and clothed his brooding fear in clumsy, stuttering words. He would busy himself with his opium lay-out, the tasselled bamboo pipe that had been coloured a deep, golden brown by a "thousand and ten thousand smokes," as he put it, the box filled with treacly chandoo, the yen-hok, and the yen-shi-gow, and reply calmly:
"Do not give wings to trouble. It flies swiftly without them." ”

“ For, since everything from drawing teeth to shaving, from birth to burial, is a matter of communal interest to the Chinese who do not know the meaning of the word privacy and have no objection to the most glaring publicity, it was a scandal in the nostrils of all respectable Pell Street householders that Minnie Tsing, married now nearly three years, had not as yet brought a child into the world and that there seemed no prospect of her doing so. ”

“ That was the name he had given her two years earlier when, just out of Harvard, he had come to Pell Street to share with his countrymen the wisdom the West had taught him. His clan, typically Chinese in their admiration for him, the literatus, the educated gentleman, had backed him with capital for his enterprise, a weekly newspaper which he called the Eminent Elevation—with an ironically democratic side-glance, the result of American training, at the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi who, within the crenelated battlements of Pekin's Tartar town, was known by the same honorific title. ”

“ The blind have no racial prejudice. They know neither the meaning nor the tragedy of colour, and if the others called Tsing Yu-ch'ing a damned, yeller Chink, they called each other damned Mick, and damned Dutchman, and damned Sheeny, and damned Wop, and damned what-not.
Damned! Rather the Pell Street term for ethnological melting-pot endearment. ”

“ Levinsky—I know Tsing is an educated man, and he may be a fine man. But——"
"He's yeller. Right ye are foist shot out o' the box. But, yeller or pea green or black with white polka dots, he's a real gent—get that? And Minnie's my only child, and I got rheumatiz of the heart, and she'll be all alone, and she's blind—and Tsing 'll take care of her. I trust that homely, yeller Chink—see? And there ain't many—white or yeller—that I trust around Pell Street." ”

“ She pointed with thumb across shoulder into the shop, and when Tsing looked puzzled, she went on:
"Say! All men are just the same, ain't they—if they're white or if they're yeller Chinks like yerself! Ain't got no thought in yer head 'xcept yerself, have ye? Selfishness! That's man's middle name—though—" she paused—"mebbe it's thoughtlessness more'n selfishness."
"My dear Mrs. Levinsky, I assure you——"
Tsing had no idea of what he was going to assure the belligerent Irishwoman. ”

“ He bowed courteously, and shook hands.
"The weekly Chinese newspaper which I publish goes to press today," he replied in his beautifully modulated, slightly precious English which he had learned at Harvard. "Few of my countrymen can read the American newspapers. It is therefore my duty——"
"Yer duty? Say!" Mrs. Levinsky obeyed the suggestion of the word. She spoke with hectic, running ease. "You—and yer duty! It's man's favourite excuse when he don't want to play the game none, see? Look a-here, Tsing, did ye ever stop to think wot's yer duty to my little Minnie—in there? " ”

“ And we both live around Pell Street ways, sez I! There's more than one goil around here that'll toin up her nose at Minnie, I guess, when she's Mrs. Tsing. But wot the devil? That won't prevent them same goils wot toins up their noses from havin' a Chink for a side-kick when nobody ain't lookin'! And so I sez: let's fix it straight and regular with a ring and a weddin'-cake. Sure I know wot my mother's family'll say, livin' all proper and swell up in the Bronx! But what do I care? ”

“ Think much. Remember what is written in the Kiou-li: 'The blind rise and depart when the torches are brought in!'"
"Love never departs!" replied Tsing Yu-ch'ing.
Thus the talk, to and fro. Too, though this was restricted to officious and sincere outsiders since Pell Street knew better—and worse, there was the usual babble of opium and Chinese slavery and other resplendently, romantically wicked things; and Miss Rutter, the social settlement investigator, took it upon herself to look into the matter.
Mrs. Levinsky would have boxed her ears, had it not been for the close proximity of Mr. ”

“ Ye're the only guy wot ever calls on her regular except onct in a while her cousins and them's just roughneck bums and talk of nuthin' 'xcept baseball and gang fights and mebbe a doity story or two. Sure Mike! ”