You can fairly see the
merry eyes of the author of the "Argonauts of '49" dancing with
pleasure as he describes the game of cards between "Truthful James,"
"Bill Nye" and "Ah Sin."
"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 a smile that was childlike and bland.
"Yet the cards they were stacked
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 the 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 Chinee cheap labour'--
And he went for that heathen Chinee."
There are all kinds of jugglers in Chinatown and among them are
numerous fortune-tellers.
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