OVER EDUCATED

ON THE BUND a few days ago a Japanese rickshaw-man called an English salt who failed to see the sweet reasonableness of paying him six times his legal fare a “ruddy-tinted fool.” A Chinaman thereupon walked up to him and remonstrated saying that such an expression was “belly rude.” A propos of this incident Fiasco da Gama, naturalized Britisher, delivers himself thusly: -

I’ve ran acrost some curious things, I guess

I’ve served beneath a score of different banners;

But I’ve never see’d the world in such a mess,

As when Chinks wire in to teach thim folkses manners!

For a heathen man to name you names ain't proper.

Though he slangs you in a lingo of his own;

But when his oaths are in Hinglish, then a stopper

Must be put on stealing what's for bus alone;

The worstest that they can go is call you is baka·,

(The Chelsea sage says most are fools unmixed)

But I’ve dropped across a cuss who’d madden Shaka:

He called me fool with something strong prefixed:

We’ve teached them folkses various kinds of stuff;

We’ve given ‘em trains, an’ telegraffs an’ rifles,

An’ dynamite an’ warships quantum suffi

Pot-hats an’ lamps an’ other sich like trifles