AN AMERICAN IN A FOREIGN LAND

NOW I have a story to tell you about how this country looks after its
citizens abroad. It is not a long story, but it is a good one, and
Americans have been proud of Captain Ingraham ever since his gallant
act.

In 1848 there was a great rebellion in Hungary against Austria. Some
terrible fighting took place and then it was put down with much cruelty
and slaughter. The Austrian government tried to seize all the leaders of
the Hungarian patriots and put them to death, but several of them
escaped to Turkey and took refuge in the City of Smyrna. Among these was
the celebrated Louis Kossuth, and another man named Koszta.

Austria asked Turkey to give these men up, but the Sultan of Turkey
refused to do so. Soon after that Koszta came to the United States, and
there in 1852 he took the first step towards becoming an American
citizen. He was sure that the United States would take care of its
citizens. And he found out that it would.

The next year he had to go back to Smyrna on some business. That was not
a safe place for him. The Austrians hated him as they did all the
Hungarian patriots. They did not ask Turkey again to give him up, but
there was an Austrian warship, the _Huszar_, in the harbor, and a plot
was made to seize Koszta and take him on board this ship. Then he could
easily be carried to Austria and put to death as a rebel.

One day, while Koszta was sitting quietly in the Marina, a public place
in Smyrna, he was seized by a number of Greeks, who had been hired to do
so by the Austrian consul. They bound him with ropes and carried him on
board the _Huszar_.

It looked bad now for poor Koszta, for he was in the hands of his
enemies. It is said that the Archduke John, brother of the Emperor of
Austria, was captain of the ship. By his orders iron fetters were
riveted on the ankles and wrists of Koszta, and he was locked up in the
ship as one who had committed a great crime.

But a piece of great good fortune for the prisoner happened, for the
next day the _St. Louis_, an American sloop-of-war, came sailing into
the harbor. Captain Duncan N. Ingraham, who had been a midshipman in the
War of 1812, was in command.

He was just the man to be there. He was soon told what had taken place,
and that the prisoner claimed to be an American, and he at once sent an
officer to the _Huszar_ and asked if he could see Koszta. He was told
that he might do so.

Captain Ingraham went to the A