The Indianapolis Journal

Fowler Wanted a Free Passage to the United States.

I'm acquainted with affliction, chiefly in the form of fiction, as it's offered up by strangers at the consul's open door:
And I know all kinds of sorrow that relief would try to borrow with various sums, from sixpence up ward to a penny more!
And I think I know all fancy styles of active mendicancy, from the helpless Irish soldier who mixed in our country's war;
And who lay in Libby Prison in a war that wasn't his'n, and I sent back to the country-that he never saw before.
I know the wretched seaman who was tortured by a demon captain till he fled in terror with his wages in arrear;
And I've given him sufficient to ship as an efficient and active malefactor with a gentle privateer.
Oh, I know the wealthy tourist who (through accident the purest) lost his letters, watch and wallet from the cold deck coming o'er;
And I, heeding that preamble, lent him enough to gamble till he won back all his money on "a cold deck" here ashore!
I have tickets bought for mothers and their babes—that were another's—and their husbands, who not always could be claimed as theirs alone:
Till I've come to the conclusion that for ethical confusion and immoral contribution I have little left unknown!
But I never, never, never, in beneficent endeavor, fell into the wicked meshes by the Saxon Fowler spread;
And it seems to me a pistol used judiciously at Bristol would have not too prematurely brought this matter to a head!
-Bret Harte, in Washington Post.