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next January and make his house in Pekin my home, he will afford me
facilities that few men can have there for seeing and learning. He will
give me letters to the chiefs of the great Mail Steamship Company which
will be of service to me in this matter. I expect to do all this, but
I expect to go to the States first--and from China to the Paris World's
Fair.
Don't show this letter.
Yours affly
SAM.
P. S. The crown Princess of this Kingdom will be buried tomorrow with
great ceremony--after that I sail in two weeks for California.
This concludes Mark Twain's personal letters from the islands.
Of his descriptive news letters there were about twenty, and they
were regarded by the readers of the Union as distinctly notable.
Re-reading those old letters to-day it is not altogether easy to
understand why. They were set in fine nonpareil type, for one
thing, which present-day eyes simply refuse at any price, and the
reward, by present-day standards, is not especially tempting.
The letters began in the Union with the issue of April the 16th,
1866. The first--of date March 18th--tells of the writer's arrival
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