My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year

by George Francis Train

For amusement, as I have said, I had the universal atmosphere, and I had the great old farm, and the forest and the fields. I had them all to myself. I roamed over them, and through them, at will. I used to set box-traps for rabbits and snares for partridges. I had a little gun, also, and a little dog, with which I would hunt rabbits or squirrels. The dog I have always regarded with wonder. He could see a gray squirrel at the top of a tree half a mile away. Some persons think he smelled the squirrel, but I am certain he saw it. And he was only a mongrel, at that. He would lead me to a tree, and I would shoot the squirrel. The little dog—a sort of fox terrier—was the only real friend I ever had. He was my constant companion, whenever I could get to him or he to me. In the winter I used him as a warming-pan. The old farmhouse was cold—very cold. We had no means of heating it. At night I would find the sheets of my bed as cold as an ice-floe. Then I would send my little dog down under the covering, and he would stay there until he had warmed up the bed.

Then there was pigeon-netting. This is an old sport that has, I suppose, died out in New England. In my boyhood, however, great flocks of wild pigeons used to come to the New England woods and forests. The device for catching large numbers of them by netting was quite primitive, but effective.

My uncle Francis (for whom I was named), whom I used to help net pigeons, was quite a sportsman. He was fond of fishing, and he was a great hand at the nets. We had two places for spreading the nets, one in the "vineyard" and the other in a "burnt-hill" in the forest. All the foliage was stripped from several trees that were close together. Then we would arrange the net so it could be drawn together at the right time, spread it over the ground, and bait it. Then we would plant our stool-pigeons. As soon as we saw a flock of pigeons approaching we would stir the stool-pigeons by pulling on a string to which they were attached. They would move about, as if they were really alive. The pigeons would circle about the spot, attracted by the fluttering stool-pigeons, and then they would catch sight of the grain and come down. When the net was filled with them, we would draw the strings, and sometimes we caught as many as a hundred at a time. They were then killed and sold.

By such work as this I was earning my own support. This is a sample of my life on the farm from four to ten years. I wore one suit of clothes a year, and the suit cost originally not more than $10, and was made at home. I had some little pocket-money occasionally. I was permitted to sell the rabbits and partridges, the spoil of my traps and gun. These small resources usually enabled me to keep a few cents—sometimes a few dollars—in my pockets.

There is nothing more extravagant and truly wasteful than a boy with a few dollars in his pockets. He can throw away his slender fortune with magnificent bravado. One summer I had accumulated $17, and, naturally, I was itching to spend it. The hired man was going up to Concord to help celebrate "Cornwallis Day" (October 19), and I got consent to accompany him. There was to be a fair, and I took my money with me—very stupidly. The memory of it was soon all that remained.

My first step in extravagance was the purchase of a bunch of firecrackers. It cost me, apparently, ten cents; but actually it was my financial undoing, and cost me $17. I began to pop the crackers, and soon had a crowd of boys around me. They were envious of me. They didn't have money to buy crackers. I popped away with great nonchalance, but husbanding my ammunition and popping only a single cracker at a time. This was strategy of a high order; but I could not keep it up. I didn't know the resourcefulness of boy-nature. Presently, I heard a boy whisper just behind me, to one of his companions: "Just wait a minute, and you will see him touch off the whole pack!"

This was irresistible. My blood was fired with ambition. I fired the whole bunch at once! The hurrahs and yells were tremendous, and set me wild. I went and bought another bunch, and set it all off at one time, as if firecrackers were no new thing to me. But my recklessness was not to stop there. I had been carried off my feet by the hurrah, as many an older person has been before.

Our hired man came to me and said that a very pretty thing was going on near by. I went with him, and saw a man playing a game with three thimbles, a pea, and a green cushion. The game was to guess under which of the thimbles the pea was concealed. The hired man thought he knew and insisted that he knew, and the gamester wanted to bet him that he didn't. After a while another man came up and tried his hand at guessing. He also missed. The loss of his money made him indignant, and he took up another of the thimbles. The pea was not there.

The thing then seemed so easy to our hired man that he asked to try a dollar on the game. Then the irate man who had lost his money took up the other thimble and brushed the pea off the cushion. Our hired man, who let nothing that was going on about the green cushion escape his sight, saw the pea swept away, and eagerly bet the dealer that there was no pea there at all. The dealer took him up, and lifted the thimble, and lo! there was the pea. This did not satisfy the hired man, who kept on betting, and losing until he had no money left. Thus our savings went up in powder smoke and in guesses at the whereabouts of a fleeting pea. I did not gamble then, nor have I gambled since.

But the firecracker day had its lessons for me. It taught me some things about money and its power, and it got me interested in Cornwallis. I began to read American history.