May 27, 1875

THE ATHENS MESSENGER

A pleasant greeting to your kindly face, which beams as fresh and pleasant away out here in the heart of heathendom, as it does in your own native country. Not even a trace of sea-sickness is visible on your genial features, after your voyage of 6,000 miles, to say nothing of the wear and tear of that long railroad ride across the Western Continent. How often, no doubt, you have been knocked and tumbled about by baggagemasters -- how often rudely jostled and pushed and squeezed by your traveling confreres, as they insisted on having a fair allotment of room in the mail-bag! Yet you bore it all with patient good humor, and when you reach our desk and open up your budget of local news, you seem to smile all the more cheerfully for having encountered the fatigue and trials of a journey half way round the world. What a wearisome time you have had in hunting up your Asiatic subscriber! You never dreamed, I suppose, when you made your first appearance on this mundane sphere, that you would one day reach so wide a circulation. And your Editor no doubt chuckles in his sleeve every time he brings out a new No., as he reflects on his less fortunate brethren of the quill, who never succeed in getting their papers outside of the State, much less in sending them to China!

And how cheerful you look in your new dress! That new "power press" has powerfully improved your personal appearance. New heading, new type, new physique, "new advertisements" -- almost out and out a new newspaper! Dear me, who would have thought that a modest little county sheet, after doing services as a local news medium for more that thirty years, should be able on a sudden to doff its plain and antiquated garb, and come out in all the freshness of rejuvenated youth! Somebody must have discovered that Elixir of Life that old chemists used to go crazy about. Well, whatever may be the secret of the metamorphosis, it a matter of hearty congratulation; and though necessarily much behind time, we would not fail to extend you ours from these Oriental shores.

What a variety of local news you manage to stow away in your columns. Nothing happens anywhere to anybody, but you seem to know all about it. Little incidents jotted down with as much familiarity as if you were talking to your neighbor just across the county line; well-known names of places and people, which brings up hosts of former recollections, and make us feel as if we were nearer home by half the earth's circumference. Even your columns of advertisements strengthen the illusion. Here we have the "M. & C. R. R. Time Table" regularly, as if we were not eternally beyond the hearing of even the combined screech of all the locomotives that ever clattered along that road, or ever will. There is the "List of Delinquent Letters" -- fortunately there are none for us; much good would the 4 weeks' kindly warning of the P. M. do us! Here are Marriage Notices of people whose honeymoon is long since over; obituaries of old friends whom we are shocked to find have been lying in their graves for weeks before we ever suspected that death had laid his icy hand upon them. Now there is going to be a

Lecture; now a magnificent Traveling Circus; now a spelling-school. Dear me! how do you expect us to patronize such things unless you advertise them 80 or 90 days ahead? And here are items from your local correspondents, at the head of whom stands the inevitable "Dick," of Albany. What a charm attaches to these little, gossiping letters, chatting so familiarly about men and things 10,000 miles away. Why don't such places as Coolville and Hocking Port (around which -- for us -- are gathered so many tender reminiscences) send in their budget more regularly? Now you have adopted your "enlarged quarto" form, you have room in your columns for almost everything. Of course you pride yourself on being able to tell us poor heathens so much. But in some instances, in your efforts to enlighten your subscribers on this side the water, you quite overshoot the mark. As for instance when you gravely inform us -- three months after it happened -- that the Emperor is dead, or that Pickering & Sons is the best place to go for the finest brand of China Teas. As though we needed to go there in order to be accommodated! It is true we give you credit for knowing a great many things before we do, and many indeed which we would never know but for your kindly information. But you can't tell us what is the latest style of pigtail, or what our new Emperor's name is, or the easiest way to learn Chinese letters, or what the beggars in this country eat in their soup, or how to spell or pronounce Sz'chuen, or when there will be a railroad from Foo Chow to Tai Yuen, or all that a Chinaman will do for the sake of cash! So, there!

However we would not put on any airs. It is true we possess a few superior advantages --for instance, we are rejoicing every day in the beams of the meridian sun, while you are groping in midnight darkness; we are delivered from many of the inconveniences of life in a civilized land, such as waiting for delayed trains, or being run over by street cars. No telegraph wires interfere with the flying of our kites, nor are our ears assailed by unending racket of steam manufactories or iron rolling mills. We have much to be thankful for. Yet we hail with joy each arrival of this cheerful, MESSENGER, from the din and roar of Civilization, and through its columns offer a pleasant greeting to all who ever turn a wondering thought to China.

Kiukiang, March 31st, 1875