The Project Gutenberg EBook of Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

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Title: Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again

Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

Last Updated: February 17, 2009
Release Date: August 20, 2006 [EBook #3191]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN ***

Produced by David Widger

GOLDSMITH'S FRIEND ABROAD AGAIN

By Mark Twain

NOTE.--No experience is set down in the following letters
which had to be invented. Fancy is not needed to give
variety to the history of a Chinaman's sojourn in America.
Plain fact is amply sufficient.

LETTER I

SHANGHAI, 18--.

DEAR CHING-FOO: It is all settled, and I am to leave my oppressed and
overburdened native land and cross the sea to that noble realm where all
are free and all equal, and none reviled or abused--America! America,
whose precious privilege it is to call herself the Land of the Free and
the Home of the Brave. We and all that are about us here look over the
waves longingly, contrasting the privations of this our birthplace
with the opulent comfort of that happy refuge. We know how America has
welcomed the Germans and the Frenchmen and the stricken and sorrowing
Irish, and we know how she has given them bread and work, and liberty,
and how grateful they are. And we know that America stands ready to
welcome all other oppressed peoples and offer her abundance to all that
come, without asking what their nationality is, or their creed or color.
And, without being told it, we know that the foreign sufferers she
has rescued from oppression and starvation are the most eager of her
children to welcome us, because, having suffered themselves, they know
what suffering is, and having been generously succored, they long to
be generous to other unfortunates and thus show that magnanimity is not
wasted upon them.

AH SONG HI.

LETTER II

AT SEA, 18--.

DEAR CHING-FOO: We are far away at sea now; on our way to the bea