reat freedom which each
citizen enjoys. Every man considers himself the equal of every other,
and a young man who is ambitious will not rest until he reaches the top
of his profession or trade. Thousands of Americans who were once very
poor, have become millionaires or multi-millionaires. Many of them had
no college education, they taught themselves, and some of them have
become both literary and scholarly. A college or university education
does not necessarily make a man learned; it only gives him the
opportunity to learn. It is said that some college men have proven
themselves to be quite ignorant, or rather that they do not know so
much as those who have been self-taught. I do not in any way wish to
disparage a college education; no doubt men who have been trained in a
university start in life with better prospects and with a greater
chance of success, but those men who have not had such advantages have
doubtless done much to make their country great and prosperous, and
they ought to be recognized as great men.

The general desire of the American people to travel abroad is one of
their good traits. People who never leave their homes cannot know
much. A person may become well-informed by reading, but his practical
knowledge cannot be compared with that of a person who has travelled.
We Chinese are great sinners in this regard. A Chinese maxim says, "It
is dangerous to ride on horseback or to go on a voyage": hence until
very recently we had a horror of going abroad. A person who remains
all his life in his own town is generally narrow-minded,
self-opinioned, and selfish. The American people are free from these
faults. It is not only the rich and the well-to-do who visit foreign
countries, but tradesmen and workmen when they have saved a little
money also often cross the Atlantic. Some years ago a Senator in
Washington told me that he crossed the Atlantic Ocean every summer and
spent several months in Europe, and that the next trip would be his
twenty-eighth voyage. I found, however, that he had never gone beyond
Europe. I ventured to suggest that he should extend his next annual
journey a little farther and visit Japan, China, and other places in
the Far East which I felt sure he would find both interesting and
instructive. I have travelled through many countries in Europe and
South America, and wherever I have gone and at whatever hotel I have
put up, I have always found some Americans, and on many o