Randy -- A version of a talk I gave at the last Elmira conference on Twichell, Twain and the Hartford-based Chinese Educational Mission of the 1870s is at the Asylum Hill Congregational Church website: http://www.ahcc.org/TWAIN/MarkJoeandBOYS4.htm This might help show how the atmosphere in Hartford, and Clemens' close friend Twichell's involvement, contributed to the evolution you are seeking to trace. Twichell and the CEM's founder and inspiration, Yung Wing, spoke on platforms together against Chinese Exclusion, and Clemens backed them to the hilt. 
 
But the CEM also became, I think, emblematic of Twichell's and Clemens' later widely diverging views on missionaries. This issue, of course, colored Clemens' writings and public statements in late life.
 
A year before his death, Clemens decided the best way to write autobiography was not to dictate, as he had been doing, but (he told Howells) to write absolutely truthful letters to friends but not send them. The first such was to Twichell, and it excoriates missionaries for, among other things, doing exactly what Twichell had been doing with the boys of the CEM: "He beguiles the little children to forsake their parents’ religion & break their hearts. Would you be willing to have a Mohammedan missionary do that with your children or grandchildren?" 
 
Twichell, of course, had done all he could to beguile the boys (12 up to college age) of the CEM into Christianity; indeed, he and Harmony had seriously considered becoming missionaries abroad during their early married years, but when the CEM came to Hartford Twichell wrote: "Lo, God has brought the work to my very door." In 1909 he still felt this way; Clemens' views had evolved.
 
SteveSteve Courtney7 Union St.Terryville, CT [log in to unmask]
www.josephhopkinstwichell.com> Date: Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:18:05 -0700> From: [log in to unmask]> Subject: Twain on China and Chinese Immigrants> To: [log in to unmask]> > To the the budding scholars, especially:> > How did Twain's views on Chinese immigration and Sino-US relations evolve from his Frontier journalism days through the Boxer Rebellion and its aftermath?> > Why did Twain leave the employ of the San Francisco Morning Call? What factors might have pushed him over the edge and what's the status of the scholarly debate on that issue? (You might begin by reading "The Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy", http://www.twainquotes.com/Galaxy/187005e.html)> > What did Twain mean when he said "I am a Boxer"? How might we deconstruct the rhetorical complexities of that oft-quoted anti-imperialist speech? Can you recognize any common debate strategies which he might have been employing to highlight American hypocracies? (http://www.twainquotes.com/19001124.html)> > What's the status of Martin Zehr's work on his book concerning MT and the Chinese?> > > The following passage was written by the late Jim Zwick in an email to the author on 15 November 2007: > > I had a conversation with a high school teacher in China about Chinese interest in Mark Twain long before I had an interest in him or knew that he wrote anything about China. Chinese Studies was one of my majors as an undergrad, and I spent 1978-1979 studying at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Because I happened to be there, I was among the first Americans able to go to China after the U.S. and China normalized relations. Most people who went into China at that time had to stick to the tours. Because I could speak a little Chinese, they let me wander around on my own a few times. One day I climbed one of the> mountains in Guilin. A Chinese man noticed I was about to take the wrong path and pointed me in the right direction up the mountain. After he found I could speak Chinese, we ended up spending the afternoon together. Because U.S.-China relations were still pretty tense back then, he wanted to show me that Chinese did not hate Americans. To prove that, he brought me to his home where he had a Chinese translation of Huckleberry Finn that he was teaching in his classes. He also noted the comparison with Lu Xun, who I happened to be reading at the time for a Chinese Literature class I was taking. He didn't speak English and I could barely speak Chinese -- definitely not enough to hold an academic discussion -- so that discussion didn't go very far but the interest in Huckleberry Finn as realist literature and a portrayal of both racial and class oppression stuck with me.> > PLEASE DISCUSS.> > Randy Abel> Yantai University, China> > > > ---------------------------------> Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your homepage.
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