"O SINO SAN!"

A Truthful Japanese Idyll.

O Sino San! O Sino San! Who waketh me at morn!

Why is it that I feel of thee unutterable scorn?

When I behold thy greasy poll and little piggy eyes,

I fear that they have told of thee unwarrantable lies!

They told me when I wandered forth to seek thee in Japan,

That I should find a priceless girl, too beautiful for man.

They told me of thy cherry cheeks, thy hair of night-dark sable,

And how you squatted on the floor—the Japanese for table;

They gushed about your merry ways, your manners without flaw,

In thee, the girl idealised, you little fraud, we saw.

But now in wind-swept bleak Japan as our sore throats we muffle,

We see thy senseless pudding face and irritating shuffle;

As you go slopping thro' the streets of your foul-smelling city,

You're far too common to be rare, too brainless to be witty.

Your senseless, everlasting grin, your squatting monkey shape,

Proclaim your Ma marsupial, your ancestor an ape!

A curio they promised us to drive a lover crazy,

With little soft canoodling ways, and sweetness of a daisy.

We read of thee in tea-house neat, in cherry-blossomed pages,

But find a girl of gin-saloon and Yoshiwara cages.

You lure the European on, admire his rings and collars,

But never really love his lips, invariably his dollars;

We'd all forgive thy grin, guffaw, and rancid-smelling tresses,

If we could trace thy fraud, O San, in half-a-dozen guesses.

It's lasted long, it's lasted strong, it cannot last much longer,

For if the crank be competent, my common sense is stronger.

The English woman flashes scorn from all her comely features,

To be compared by any man with such "disgusting creatures."

And all the fair Americans, who roam the wide world over,

Will trample down this windy chaff and Japaneesy clover.

'Tis not thy fault, O Sino San—we find the truth and strike it,

Farewell, thou Audrey of the East—grin on then "As you Like It!"

But never more by writer bold be canonised or sainted,

Deluded Doll! O Sino San, you're blacker than you're painted!

Yokohama, April 1, 1893.