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Library / Literature & Fiction

Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again

by Mark Twain

Pages
about 22
Category
Literature & Fiction
Language
English
Reading time
24 min at 250 wpm
Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 13 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

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.

DEAR CHING-FOO: We are far away at sea now; on our way to the beautiful Land of the Free and Home of the Brave. We shall soon be where all men are alike, and where sorrow is not known.

The good American who hired me to go to his country is to pay me $12 a month, which is immense wages, you know--twenty times as much as one gets in China. My passage in the ship is a very large sum--indeed, it is a fortune--and this I must pay myself eventually, but I am allowed ample time to make it good to my employer in, he advancing it now.

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