The heathen Chinee is peculiar—
Which the same I am free to maintain.
—Copyright by Houghton Mifflin & Co., Boston, and used by their kind permission.
PARODY ON “THAT HEATHEN CHINEE”
[The following remarkable parody was written by the Reverend Father Wood, Professor of English Literature at St. Ignatius College, San Francisco. For the annual exercises of his class, a debate was to be held as to the respective abilities of the various authors and poets studied during the year. Each had his advocates and strenuous adherents. The final test adopted was that each adherent should write out Bret Harte’s Heathen Chinee in the form his favorite author would have followed. These verses are after the style of Samuel Lover, the Irish poet.]
Did ye hear of the haythen Ah Sin,
Maginn?
The bouldest of bould Chaneymin,
Maginn?