Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again – Mark Twain – Platanus Publishing

“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. For a mere form, I have turned over my wife, my boy, and my two daughters to my employer’s partner for security for the payment of the ship fare. But my employer says they are in no danger of being sold, for he knows I will be faithful to him, and that is the main security.”