The honourable gentleman and others Author:Achmed Abdullah Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: A Pell Street Spring Song A Poet was Chi Kun-yi, and an exceedingly vain one. For he knew the sweetness of his own songs, the tender, dim beauty of his own... more » words; and so, to quote the bland judgment of Yat, a squat, honey-coloured Canton man and his fellow student at Columbia University, he "imagined that he could winnow the thrashing floor of human emotions with the wind of his nostrils." To which the poet replied in a voice as dry and cutting as the east wind: "Why not? At home my name is honoured. Not only because"—he spoke with a certain beatific insolence, a certain brazen though not unamiable tolerance—"I am a Manchu, a gentleman tracing his descent unsullied to Prince Yangkunu's grandson who wrested the throne of the Middle Kingdom from the Chinese Ming weaklings, but also because of what I have achieved personally. "Before, to please my respected father, I came to New York in search of Western wisdom, in spite of most tender years—I am only twenty- two now—I was already acknowledged a poet of no mean merit by the gentry and fashion of Peking. Peking! A regal city! Even you, though born in unmentionable Canton, will admit that. The Gazette published the poem which I wrote on the eve of my departure for San Francisco. And now, if you will reach me my guitar, I shall charm your ears." Growling, though secretly pleased, his friend' handed him the two-stringed instrument, saying that indeed Chi Kun-yi was a poet. Still —"you are conceited, my blue-blooded Pekingese dandy. To hear you talk one would believe that the strings of your cotton drawers rival a Mandarin's breeches of state in splendour and distinction." "Notch your tongue, lest it slip, blinking Buddha," softly enjoined the young Manchu. "For now cometh a poem which is a poem. Also the melody...« less