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George Francis Train. From a recent photograph.

My Life in Many States
and in Foreign Lands

DICTATED
IN MY SEVENTY-FOURTH YEAR
BY
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN
ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1902

Copyright, 1902
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
Published November, 1902

MY LIFE IN MANY STATES
AND IN FOREIGN LANDS

TO THE CHILDREN
AND TO THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN
IN THIS AND IN ALL LANDS
WHO LOVE AND BELIEVE IN ME
BECAUSE THEY KNOW
I LOVE AND BELIEVE IN THEM

PREFACE

I have been silent for thirty years. During that long period I have taken little part in the public life of the world, have written nothing beyond occasional letters and newspaper articles, and have conversed with few persons, except children in parks and streets. I have found children always sympathetic and appreciative. For this reason I have readily entered into their play and their more serious moods; and for this reason, also, have dedicated this book to them and to their children.

For many years I have been a silent recluse, remote from the world in my little corner in the Mills Hotel, thinking and waiting patiently. That I break this silence now, after so many years, is due to the suggestion of a friend who has told me that the world of to-day, as well as the world of to-morrow, will be interested in reading my story. I am assured that many of the things I have accomplished will endure as a memorial of me, and that I ought to give some account of them and of myself.

And so I have tried to compress a story of my life into this book. With modesty, I may say that the whole story could not be told in a single volume. I have tried not to be prolix, keeping in mind while preparing this record of events, "all of which I saw, and part of which I was," that there is a limit to the patience of readers.

I beg my readers to remember that this book was spoken, not written, by me. It is my own life-story that I have related. It may not, in every part, agree with the recollections of others; but I am sure that it is as accurate in statement as it is blameless in purpose. If I should fail at any point, this will be due to some wavering of memory, and not to intention. Thanks to my early Methodist training, I have never knowingly told a lie; and I shall not begin at this time of life.

While I may undertake other volumes that will present another side of me—my views and opinions of men and things—that which stands here recorded is the story of my life. It has been dictated in the mornings of July and August of the past summer, one or two hours being given to it during two or three days of each week. Altogether, the time consumed in the dictation makes a total of thirty-five hours. Before I began the dictation, I wrote out hastily a brief sketch, or mere epitome, of my history, so that I might have before my mind a guide that would prevent me from wandering too far afield or that might save me from tediousness. I give it here, as a foretaste of the book. I have called it "My Autobiography boiled down—400 Pages in 200 Words."

"Born 3-24-'29. Orphaned New Orleans, '33. (Father, mother, and three sisters—yellow fever.) Came North alone, four years old, to grandmother, Waltham, Mass. Supported self since babyhood. Farmer till 14. Grocer-boy, Cambridgeport, two years. Shipping-clerk, 16. Manager, 18. Partner, Train & Co., 20 (income, $10,000). Boston, 22 ($15,000).

"Established G. F. T. & Co., Melbourne, Australia, '53. Agent, Barings, Duncan & Sherman, White Star Line (income, $95,000). Started 40 clippers to California, '49. Flying Cloud, Sovereign of the Seas, Staffordshire. Built A. & G. W. R. R., connecting Erie with Ohio and Mississippi, 400 miles.

"Pioneered first street-railway, Europe, America, Australia. (England: Birkenhead, Darlington, Staffordshire, London, '60.) Built first Pacific Railway (U. P.), '62-'69, through first Trust, Crédit Mobilier. Owned five thousand lots, Omaha, worth $30,000,000. (Been in fifteen jails without a crime.)

"Train Villa, built at Newport, '68. Daughter's house, 156 Madison Avenue, '60. Organized French Commune, Marseilles, Ligue du Midi, October, '70, while on return trip around the world in eighty days. Jules Verne, two years later, wrote fiction of my fact.

"Made independent race for Presidency against Grant and Greeley, '71-72. Cornered lawyers, doctors, clericals, by quoting three columns of Bible to release Woodhull-Claflin from jail, '72. Now lunatic by law, through six courts.

"Now living in Mills Palace, $3 against $2,000 a week, at Train Villa. (Daughter always has room for me in country.) Played Carnegie forty years ahead. Three generations living off Crédit Mobilier. Author dozen books out of print (vide Who's Who, Allibone, Appletons' Cyclopædia).

"Four times around the world. First, two years. Second, eighty days, '70. Third, sixty-seven and a half days, '90. Fourth, sixty days, shortest record, '92. Through psychic telepathy, am doubling age. Seventy-four years young."

It may be a matter of surprise to some readers that I should have accomplished so much at the early age when so many of my most important enterprises were accomplished. It should be remembered, however, that I began young. I was a mature man at an age when most boys are still tied to their mothers' apron strings. I had to begin to take care of myself in very tender years. I suppose my experiences in New Orleans, on the old farm in Massachusetts, in the grocery store in Boston, and in the shipping house of Enoch Train and Company, matured and hardened me before my time. I was never much of a boy. I seem to have missed that portion of my youth. I was obliged to look out for myself very early, and was soon fighting hard in the fierce battle of competition, where the weak are so often lost.

It may be worth while to present here some important evidence of the confidence that was reposed in me by experienced men, when, as a mere youth, I was undertaking vast enterprises that might have made older men hesitate. When I was about to leave Boston in '53 for business in Australia, and organized the house of Caldwell, Train and Company, I was authorized by the following well-established houses of this and other countries to use them as references, and did so on our firm circulars: John M. Forbes, John E. Thayer and Brother, George B. Upton, Enoch Train and Company, Sampson and Tappan, and Josiah Bradlee and Company, of Boston; Cary and Company, Goodhue and Company, Josiah Macy and Sons, Grinnell, Minturn and Company, and Charles H. Marshall and Company, of New York; H. and A. Cope and Company, of Philadelphia; Birckhead and Pearce, of Baltimore; J. P. Whitney and Company, of New Orleans; Flint, Peabody and Company, and Macondray and Company, of San Francisco; George A. Hopley and Company, of Charleston; Archibald Gracie, of Mobile; and the following foreign houses: Bowman, Grinnell and Company, and Charles Humberston, of Liverpool; Russell and Company and Augustine Heard and Company, of Canton.

These were among the best known commercial houses in the world at that time. Any business man, familiar with the commercial history of the modern world, should consider this list fair enough evidence of the confidence I enjoyed among men of affairs. Let me reproduce here—partly as evidence along the same line, and partly because of the value I attach to it on personal and friendly grounds—the following letter from Mr. D. O. Mills:

"New York, September 30, 1901.

"Hon. George Francis Train,

"Mills Hotel, Bleecker St., New York.

"My Dear Citizen:

"The many appreciative notices that have come to my attention of your distinguished talents of early years lead me also to send you a line of appreciation, particularly as touching the part played by you in some of the great commercial enterprises that have so signally marked the nineteenth century, notably in the Merchant Marine, and in the building of the Union Pacific Railroad, in the conception and construction of which you bore so distinguished a part.

"The present generation, with its conveniences of travel and communication, can not realize what were the difficulties and experiences of the merchant and traveler of those early days when you were engaged in the China trade, and your Clipper Ships were often seen in the port of San Francisco.

"The long voyage around the Horn, the danger experienced from sudden attack by Indians while traversing the wild and uninhabited country lying between Omaha and the Pacific Coast, are experiences which even an old voyager like myself questions as he speeds across the continent, privileged to enjoy the comforts of a Pullman car, and a railroad service that has shortened the journey from New York to San Francisco from months to a few days. In recalling the many years of our pleasant acquaintance by sea and land, not the least is the remembrance of your kind and genial spirit, and I am glad to see that you have lost none of your sincere wish to do good.

"With kind regards.
"Very truly yours,
"D. O. Mills."

Mr. Mills has known me in many walks of life. We have at times walked side by side. At others, oceans have roared between us. He is my friend, and I was glad to receive this kindly word from him, after many long years of acquaintance.

Although I am a hermit now, I was not always so. All who read this book must see that. I spent many happy years in society—and never an unhappy year anywhere, whether in jail or under social persecution; and I have lived many years with my family in my own country and in foreign lands. My wife, of whom I have spoken of in the following pages, passed into shadow-land in '77. I have children who are scattered widely now. My first child, Lily, was born in Boston, in '52, and died when five months old, in Boston. My second daughter, Susan Minerva, was born in '55, and married Philip Dunbar Guelager, who for thirty-six years was the head of the gold and silver department of the Subtreasury in this city. She now lives at "Minerva Lodge," Stamford, Connecticut, with my seven-year-old grandson. My first son, George Francis Train, Jr., was born in '56, and is now in business in San Francisco. Elsey McHenry Train, my last child, now lives in Chicago. He was born in '57. I was able to see these children well educated, at home and abroad, and to give them some chance to see the great world I had known.

A last word as to myself. Readers of this book may think I have sometimes taken myself too seriously. I can scarcely agree with them. I try not to be too serious about anything—not even about myself. When I was making a hopeless fight for the Presidency in '72, I made the following statement in one of my speeches:

"Many persons attribute to me simply an impulsiveness, and an impressibility, as if I were some erratic comet, rushing madly through space, emitting coruscations of fancifully colored sparks, without system, rule, or definite object. This is a popular error. I claim to be a close analytical observer of passing events, applying the crucible of Truth to every new matter or subject presented to my mind or my senses."

I think that estimate may be used to-day in this place. It does not so much matter, however, what I may have thought of myself or what I now think of myself. What does matter is what I may have done. I stand on my achievement.

And with this, I commit my life-story to the kind consideration of readers.

Citizen George Francis Train.

The Mills Palace,
September 22, '02.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

MY LIFE IN MANY STATES AND
IN FOREIGN LANDS

CHAPTER I

WHEN I WAS FOUR YEARS OLD
1833

My grandfather was the Reverend George Pickering, of Baltimore—a slave-owner. Having fallen in with the early Methodists, long before Garrison, Phillips, and Beecher had taken up the abolition idea, he liberated his slaves and went to preaching the Gospel. He became an itinerant Methodist preacher, with the pitiable salary of $300 a year. The sale of one of his "prime" negro slaves would have brought him in more money than four years of preaching. He would have been stranded very soon if he had not had the good sense to marry my beautiful grandmother, who had a thousand-acre farm at Waltham, ten miles out of Boston. My grandfather thus could preach around about the neighborhood, and then come back to the family at home. My father married the eldest daughter of this Methodist preaching grandfather of mine, Maria Pickering.

I was born at No. 21 High Street, Boston, during a snow-storm, on the 24th of March, '29. When I was a baby, my father went to New Orleans and opened a store. Soon after arriving in that city I was old enough to observe things, and to remember. I can recollect almost everything in my life from my fourth year. From the time I was three years old up to this present moment—a long stretch of seventy years, the Prophet's limit of human life—I can remember almost every event in my life with the greatest distinctness. This book of mine will be a pretty fair test of my memory.

I can remember the beautiful flowers of the South. How deeply they impressed themselves upon my mind! I can recall the garden with its wonderful floral wealth, the gift of the Southern sun. I can recollect exactly how the old clothesline used to look, with its load of linen—the resting-place of the long-bodied insects we called "devil's darning needles," or mosquito hawks—and how we children used to strike the line with poles, to frighten the insects and see them fly away on their filmy wings. And I can remember going down to my father's store, filling the pockets of my little frock with dried currants, which I thought were lovely, and watching him there at his work.

Rev. George Pickering, George Francis Train's grandfather.

Then came the terrible yellow-fever year. It is still known there as the year of the fever, or of the plague. This fearful epidemic swept over the city, and left it a city of the dead. It was a catastrophe recalled to me by that of Martinique. My family suffered with the rest of the city. I remember well the horror of the time. There were no hearses to be had. Physicians and undertakers had gone to the grave with their patients and patrons. The city could not afford to bury decently so many of its dead inhabitants. And the fear of the plague had so shaken the human soul that men stood afar off, aghast, and did only what they had to do in a coarse, brutal, swift burial of the dead.

There were no coffins to be had, and no one could have got them if there had been enough of them. Corpses were buried, all alike, in coarse pine boxes, hastily put together in the homes—and often by the very hands—of the relatives of the dead. One day they brought into our home a coarse pine box. I did not know what it was or for what it was meant. Then I saw them take the dead body of my little sister Josephine and put it hastily into the rough pine box. I was too young to understand it all, but I can never forget that scene; it starts tears even now. After nailing up the box and marking it to go "To the Train Vaults," the family sat and waited for the coming of the "dead wagon." The city sent round carters to pick up the numerous dead, just as it had formerly sent out scavenger carts to take away the refuse.

We could hear the "dead wagon" as it approached. We knew it by the dolorous cry of the driver. It drew nearer and nearer to our home. It all seemed so terrible, and yet I could not understand it. I heard the wagon stop under our window. Now the scene all comes back to me, and it recalls the rumble and rattle of those tumbrels of the French Reign of Terror: only it was the fever, instead of the guillotine, that demanded its victims. The driver would not enter the pest-stricken houses. He remained in his cart, and shouted out, in a heart-tearing cry, to the inmates to bring their dead to him. As he drove up to our window he placed his hands around his mouth, as a hunter does in making a halloo, and cried: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

The long-wailed dolorous cry filled the streets, empty of their frequenters: "Bring out—bring out your dead!" Again at our home the cry was heard; and I saw my father and others lift up the coarse pine box, with the body of my little sister shut inside, carry it to the window, and toss it into the "dead wagon." And then the wagon rattled away down the street, and again, as it stopped under the window of the next house, over the doomed city rang the weird cry: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

A few days later another rough pine box was brought to our home. Again I did not understand it; but I knew more of the mystery of death than I had known before. Into this box they placed the body of my little sister Louise. Then we waited for the approach of the "dead wagon." I knew that it would again come to our home, to get its freight of death. I went to the window, and looked up and down the street, and waited. Far in the distance, I heard the cry: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

The wagon finally arrived. The window was thrown open, the rude box was lifted up, taken to the window, and thrown into the wagon, which was already loaded with similar boxes. They were in great haste, it seemed to me, to be rid of the poor little box. And the carter drove on down the street to other stricken homes, crying: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

I now began to feel the loss of my sisters. Two had gone. Only one was left with me, my little sister Ellen, as frail and as lovely a flower as ever bloomed. When the next box came, and she, dead of the plague, was put into it, I thought it time for me to interfere. I went to the window and stood guard. Again came the terrible cry: "Bring out—bring out your dead!" And my last little sister was taken away in the "dead wagon."

I was too young to understand it all, but I remember going with my father and mother in the carriage every time they carried one of my sisters to the graveyard.

The next strange thing to happen was the arrival in the house of a box much larger than the others. I did not know what it could be for. The box was very rough looking. It was made of unplaned boards. My nurse told me it was for my mother. Again I took my stand by the window. "Bring out—bring out your dead!" resounded mournfully in the street just below the window where I stood. I looked out, and there was the "dead wagon." It had come for my mother.

I was astonished to find that they did not throw the box containing my mother into the wagon. It was too large and heavy. Four or five men had to come into the house and take out the box. It was marked "To the Train Vaults," and was put into the wagon with the other boxes containing dead bodies. Only my father and I sat in the carriage that went to the cemetery and to the vaults that day. There were my mother and my three little sisters; all had been swept from me in this St. Pierre style—in this volcano of yellow fever.

Finally there came one day a letter from my grandmother, the wife of the old Methodist itinerant preacher of Waltham: "Send on some one of the family, before they are all dead. Send George." And so my father made preparations to send me back to Massachusetts. I can remember now the exact wording of the card he wrote and pinned on my coat, just like the label or tag on a bag of coffee. It read:

"This is my little son George Francis Train. Four years old. Consigned on board the ship Henry to John Clarke, Jr., Dock Square, Boston; to be sent to his Grandmother Pickering, at Waltham, ten miles from Boston. Take good care of the Little Fellow, as he is the only one left of eleven of us in the house, including the servants [slaves]. I will come on as soon as I can arrange my Business."

I remember how we went down to the ship in the river. She lay out in the broad, muddy Mississippi, and seven other vessels lay between her and the shore. Planks were laid on the bank, or "levee," as they called the shore in New Orleans, and up to the side of the nearest ship. We climbed over these planks and passed over the seven vessels, and came to the Henry. My father kissed me good-by, and left me on board the ship.

There I was, aboard this great vessel—for so she seemed to me then—a little boy, without nurse or guardian to look after me. I was just so much freight. I was part of the cargo. We floated down the Mississippi slowly, and floated on and on toward the Gulf. We were floating out into the great waters, into the great world, floating through the waters of Gulf and ocean, floating along in the Gulf Stream, and floating on toward my Northern home.

Thus I was floating, when I began my life anew; and I have been floating for seventy years!

When my father said good-by to me, kissing me as we passed over the last of the seven ships between the Henry and the shore, I saw him put a handkerchief to his face, as if to hide from me the tears that were in his eyes. He feared that my little heart would break down under the strain. But I didn't cry. Everything was so new to me. I was too small to realize all that the parting meant and all that had led up to it. I could not feel that I was leaving behind me all the members of my family—in the vaults of the graveyard. The ship seemed a new world to me. I had no eyes for tears—only for wonderment.

For many years afterward I heard nothing of my father. He had dropped below the horizon when I floated down the Mississippi, and I saw and heard nothing more of him. As my mother and three sisters had been buried together in New Orleans, we had taken it for granted that father had followed them to the grave, a victim of the same pestilence. But nothing was known as to this for many years.

We were anxious to have all the bodies brought together in one graveyard in the North and buried side by side. The family burying-ground was at Waltham, where eight generations were then sleeping—that is, eight generations of Pickerings and Bemises. There were the bodies of my great-grandmother, and of ancestors belonging to the first Colonial days. My cousin, George Pickering Bemis, Mayor of Omaha, afterward had a monument erected over the spot where so many Bemises and Pickerings lay in their long rest, to preserve their memory. But my father's body was never to rest there; nor was it ever seen by any of his relatives.

My uncle, John Clarke, Jr., who had brought me out of New Orleans and rescued me from the plague, tried to find some trace of my father; but no record or vestige of him could be found in that city. Every trace of him had been swept away. His very existence there had been forgotten, erased. No one could be found who had ever heard of him, or knew anything about his store. So completely had the pestilence done its terrible work of destruction and obliteration. As this period was prior to the invention of the daguerreotype, we had no photographs of him. The only likenesses that were made then were expensive miniatures on ivory. I have no picture of him, except the one I carry forever in my memory.

Sixty years passed away. One day I received a letter from one of my cousins, Louisa Train, who was living in Michigan. She told me that her father and mother had died, and that the furniture of the old house, in which they and her grandparents had lived, had fallen to her. "In moving an old bureau," she wrote, "it fell to pieces, and, to my surprise, two documents rolled upon the floor. These papers relate to you. One of them was a letter from your father to his mother, written from New Orleans shortly before you left that city. In it he says:

"'You can imagine my loneliness in being in this great house, always so lively, with eleven persons in it, including my own family—now all alone. George is with his tutor. He is a very extraordinary boy, though only four years old. The other day he repeated some verses, of which I can remember these lines:

"'I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute; From the center all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute.'"

I was to receive one other message from my father. Since I began writing this autobiography, my aged aunt, Abigail Pickering Frost, now in her ninetieth year, discovered a letter that my father had written to her and to her sister, my aunt Alice, who afterward married Henry A. Winslow, upon the day that he placed me on the ship Henry, and sent me to my grandmother at Waltham, Mass. Aunt Abigail, after the death of aunt Alice, who was one of the victims in the wreck of the Lexington, in January, '40, hid the letter in the garret of the old Waltham farmhouse, where she later discovered it. She now sends it to me from her home in Omaha, Neb., where it had again been lost, and found after a long search, as she knew that I would appreciate it as a part of my life-story.

The letter came to me as a wail from the dead. I was very young, and childish, and thoughtless when I parted from him forever; but his letter brought back to me in a flood the bitterness of our life in New Orleans, the loneliness of my father in his great grief, and made me suffer, nearly seventy years afterward, for the pain that I was then too young to understand or feel. I give this letter, which is inexpressibly dear to me, just as it was written.

"New Orleans, June 10th, 1833.

"Dear Sisters Abigail and Alice:

"'Tis just two years since I left this place for New York, and arrived in Boston the evening of the 3d of July. I hope my dear boy will arrive safe and pass the 4th of July with you. He is now on board the ship (and the steamboat alongside the ship) to the Balize. I have written several letters by the ship, and found I had a few moments to spare which I will improve by addressing you. I refer you to the letters to Mother Pickering for particulars—as I have not time to say much. I can only say, my dear girls, that I am very unhappy here for reasons you well know. I part with George as though I was parting with my right eye—but 'tis for his good and the happiness of all that he should go; take him to your own home, care, and protection; he is no ordinary boy, but is destined for a great scholar.

"I am left here without a friend except my God! in a city where the cholera is raging to a great extent—100 are dying daily! and among them some of the most valuable citizens. A sweet little girl about the age of Ellen, and an intimate acquaintance of George's, who used to walk arm in arm with him, died this morning with the cholera, and a great number of others among our most intimate acquaintances have passed on. Mrs. Simons died in six hours! What is life worth to me? Oh, my dear sisters! could I leave this dreadful place I would, and die among my friends! The thoughts of my dear Maria and Ellen fill me with sorrow! I have mourned over their tombs in silence. I have been with them in my dreams, and frequently I meet them in my room and talk with them as though alive. All here is melancholy. When shall I see you, God only knows! I have relieved my heavy heart of a burden—a weight that was almost unsupportable.

"In parting with my lovely boy I have bequeathed him to Mother Pickering as a legacy—it being all that I possess! You will take a share of the care, and I know will be all that mothers could be for your dear sister Maria's sake!

"Give my love to Grandpa Bemis, Father Pickering, and all the rest of the family. Say to them that my mind is constantly with them, and will ever be so. I have written in great haste and very badly, as I am on board the ship and all is confusion, with the steamboat alongside. Farewell, my dear sisters! Do write me a line. If you knew how much I prize a letter from you, you would write often. Adieu, and believe me your affectionate brother,

"Oliver Train.

"To Misses Abigail and Alice Pickering,
Waltham, Mass."

The other document mentioned by my cousin Louisa, was the deed of a farm by my paternal grandfather, making a certain physician trustee of the property. I never came into that property! This was my first bequest. I had begun, even in my infancy, to give away my property, and I have thrown it away ever since. This first "bequest," however, was none of my making, although I accepted it, without trying to question the matter.

Another involuntary "bequest" of my childhood was brought about in this way. My mother, when a girl, was engaged to marry Stebbins Fiske. It was by a mere chance that they were not married—and therefore my name is "Train" by a mere accident which changed the fate of my mother and her fiancé. My father was a warm friend of Stebbins Fiske, and when Fiske was called suddenly to New Orleans, just before the day set for the marriage, he left his betrothed, Maria Pickering, in charge of my father. The result might have been foreseen. It is the common theme of romance the world over. My mother and my father fell in love with each other, and were married. There was no thought of unfaithfulness; it was merely inevitable. Fiske understood the situation, and forgave both of them, and continued the stanch friend of both.

In his will Fiske left a small sum—$5,000—to my mother's mother. It was the most delicate way in which he could leave some of his money so that his old sweetheart might get it. The terms of the will were that this money should be divided at my grandmother's death. It was so divided, and a certain portion of it should have come to me; but I never received a penny. This was my second bequest, for I allowed others to take freely what belonged to me.

My third bequest was made with my eyes open. When I was about starting for Australia in '53, another uncle-in-law, George W. Frost, whom I afterward appointed purchasing agent of the Union Pacific Railway, a splendid gentleman and a clergyman, came to me and said: "Your Aunt Abbie" (his wife) "and myself are going to take care of your old grandmother on the farm. Have you any objections to signing away your interest in the old place?"

I said that, of course, I would sign it away. I was all right. I was going out into the great world to make fortunes. And I signed it away, as if it were a mere nothing.

These incidents I mention here as illustrations of my whole life. Since my fourth year I have given away—thrown away—money. I have made others rich. But I have never yet got what was due me from others.

CHAPTER II

MY VOYAGE FROM NEW ORLEANS TO BOSTON
1833

I found myself a part of the cargo—shipped as freight, 2,000 miles, from the tropics to the arctic region, without a friend to take care of me. I was alone. This feeling, however, did not oppress me overmuch. Every one on board tried to make a pet of me, and, besides, there was so much to do, so much to see, so much to feel. From cabin to fo'cas'le I was made welcome.

There was only one cabin passenger besides myself. I sat at table opposite this passenger, and I remember that at the first meal they brought on some "flapjacks" (our present-day wheat-cakes). I was very fond of them, and ate them with sirup or molasses. I noticed that my companion in the cabin did not use molasses with his. I could not understand why any one should eat his flapjacks without molasses.

I thought this stranger too ignorant to know that molasses was the proper thing with flapjacks, and tried to help him to a fuller knowledge of the resources of the table. I reached over, and tried to pour some molasses on his plate. Just then a heavy sea struck the ship, and I was thrown forward with a lurch. The entire contents of the molasses jug went in a flood over the man's trousers! Of course he was furious, and did not appreciate my efforts to teach him. I expected him to strike me, but he did not. It did not occur to me to beg his pardon, as I was doing what I thought to be a pure act of kindness. We afterward became good friends.

We were twenty-three days on the voyage. Before we had been aboard long I became friendly with everybody on the ship, and they with me. I was very active, and had the run of the boat. I was like a parrot, a goat, or a monkey—or all three. There was no stewardess on the boat, and as I had no one to look after me, I led a wild sort of life. I lived in the fo'cas'le, or with the sailors on deck or in the riggings. I liked the fo'cas'le best. I soon got to feel at home there. Sometimes I was in the cabin with my molasses-hating friend, but the fo'cas'le was my delight, and there I was to be found at all hours. During the twenty-three days of the voyage I was not washed once! I wore the same clothes days and nights, and became a little dirty savage!

It may be easily imagined that communication with these rough, coarse, honest, but vulgar sailors had a terrible effect on me. Everything bad that is known to sailors these sailors knew, and very soon I knew. I observed everything, learned everything. I soon cursed and swore as roundly as any of them, using the words as innocently as if they were quotations from the Bible.

One of the games the sailors used to play with me was to go up into the rigging and call down to me that there was a great plantation up there that I could not see. Then they would throw lumps of sugar to me and tell me they came from the plantation in the rigging, and monkeys were throwing them to me. Of course I believed it all. How was I to know they were lying to me? I was only four years old. They stamped upon my mind the whole fo'cas'le—its rough life, its jollity, its oaths, and its lies.

As soon as our ship came to anchor out came a boat with my uncle. I remember that there was a little dog in the boat also. My uncle took me to the wharf, and then to his tobacco store in Dock Square. There I found awaiting us an old-fashioned chaise, and my uncle said he would take me right out to my grandmother's, at Waltham. The drive took us through two or three villages, and through several strips of forest. Finally we drove up to a little gate that stood about half a mile from the old farmhouse, and divided the next place from the farm of my grandmother. There were my aunts, all waiting for me.

Imagine the astonishment of my grandmother and of my aunts on seeing the dirty little street Arab that came to see them! I was as intolerably filthy as any brat that ever came out of a sewer. I fairly reeked with the smells and the dirt of the fo'cas'le! To the dust and grime of New Orleans I had added the dust and grime of the ship, for I had not been near soap and water since I left New Orleans. Fancy going to these clean and prim old ladies in such a plight! But I was at least in good health, and magnificently alive.

The first thing they did was to summon a sort of town-meeting, to have me narrate the events of my voyage. But before I was to go before my audience I must be washed and have a change of clothes. This part of the program was postponed by an accident. The ladies heard me swear! It shocked their gentle minds immeasurably. But I didn't know what swearing meant.

What can not a boy learn in three weeks that is bad? I suppose I must have picked up all the wickedness of the fo'cas'le without knowing what it was. It seemed all right to me; but not to my good grandmother and to my aunts.

They wanted to cleanse me outwardly and inwardly, and prepared to start outwardly. They insisted that I must change my clothes and have a good scrubbing. But before they began I told them some of my experiences aboard ship. I told them about the sailors getting sugar from the plantation up in the riggings and the monkeys throwing it down to me. They told me there were no fields up there, no monkeys and no sugar, except what the sailors had carried up with them.

I was indignant. "If you don't believe my story," said I, "about the plantation in the rigging and about the monkeys and the sugar, you can not wash me or change my clothes."

The line of battle was now drawn. If they did not want to believe my story, I was not going to let them do anything for me. That monkey-and-sugar story was my ultimatum. They refused to accept it. For three days they laid siege to me, but I refused to be washed or clothed in a fresh clean suit until they believed my story. I felt I was telling the truth, and could not bear to have my word doubted. Finally they said that they believed my story.

There is an old tale of a boy who was told by his parents, who did not want him to cling any longer to the old myth about Santa Claus, that it was not Santa Claus that brought him all the good things on Christmas, but that they, his parents, had been giving him the presents year after year. The boy turned to his mother and said: "Have you been fooling me about the God question too?"

CHAPTER III

MY BOYHOOD ON A FARM
1833-1843

The old house where I spent these years of my childhood and boyhood is now more than two hundred years old. It was the home of the old Methodists in that section, and had been the headquarters of the sect for a hundred years before it began to have regular "conferences." Here lived the slave-owner Pickering, who married my grandmother, the farmer's daughter. If it had not been for this home, which was a refuge and asylum for the itinerant preacher, grandfather Pickering would have starved. The farm was his anchorage. Otherwise he would have gone adrift.

A religious atmosphere pervaded the place. It left the deepest impress upon my mind. The only paper we took was Zion's Herald, a religious weekly published by Stevens, of Boston. The difference between this calm, religious life of the Methodists and the turbulent, rough, and swearing life of the fo'cas'le was very marked. But it took me a long time to get away from the atmosphere of the fo'cas'le and into that of the Methodists. Even the bath and the clean clothes did not seem to change me very much. I discovered that cleanliness is not so very near to godliness, after all.

Of course the old Methodists had prayers in the morning and at night, and they had grace at every meal. Every one knelt at prayers. But they could not make me kneel. I would not bow the knee. I had not got over the sailors' ways, and the monkeys, and the throwing down sugar from the plantation in the sails—the Santa Claus part of it. I always remembered it.

Of course I was taken to the little church, a mile off up in the woods, where my grandfather preached. It was in his "circuit." As we were coming home one day, and I was driving, the chaise struck a stone, and the old gentleman was jostled considerably. He impatiently seized the reins from me and gave the horse a severe flip with them, and drove the rest of the way himself. The little incident made a deep impression on my mind. I said to myself: "If this is the way Christians act, I do not want to have anything to do with them."

The Pickerings were an ancient Southern—and before that, an English—family. Some of the members lived in South Carolina, some in Virginia, others in Maryland. One of them sat in Washington's first cabinet. Like my grandfather, they were all slave-owners. Judge Gilbert Pickering was chairman of Cromwell's committee that cut off King Charles's head. Grandfather Pickering was a liberal man in many ways. I have spoken already of his freeing his own slaves. He chose the calling of an itinerant Methodist preacher, when to do so meant tremendous financial sacrifice and the loss of social rank. He almost starved at it, but he stuck to it with great nobleness of mind. It gave him a sort of religious freedom.

Once he could have been a bishop in the New England branch of Methodism; but he refused the ambitious title. He did not believe in bishops for their church. And so, setting aside every offer of preferment, every opportunity of rising or getting on in the world, he chose to labor at his simple calling, like a martyr. And he would shortly have found martyrdom in starvation, had it not been for my lovely grandmother, with her thrift and care.

The branch of Methodists to which my grandfather belonged was very liberal. It was so liberal, indeed, that my mother and her five sisters had all been educated at the Ursuline convent at Charlestown, Mass., which was destroyed by the mob in '42. I remember that after the mob burned this convent to the ground the Methodists wanted to buy the site, and applied to the Roman Catholic archbishop in Boston, who replied: "We sometimes purchase, but we never sell."

Another incident of my boyhood may be recalled here, as it illustrates the stubborn pride that had begun to show itself even then. One day an elegant carriage drove up to the old house, and a young lady, beautifully dressed, got out and asked to see George Train. I went up to her, and she told me who she was.

"You must remember, when you grow up," she said, "that I am Miss Sallie Rhoades. We are one of the few families of Maryland," she added, with a pride that was evident even to my boyish eyes, "that have been able to support their carriages for one hundred and fifty years." She spoke with the air of a grande dame, which stung my own pride keenly.

"While I am very glad to meet my Southern relative," I said, with equal pride, even if I could not equal her manner, "we have kept our ox-cart on the old farm for two hundred years." I expected the additional half a century to stagger her. But it did not seem to reach home; and she drove away. This was the last I ever saw of "Miss Sallie Rhoades, of Maryland."

In those days in New England we had to depend very much on ourselves on the farm, and we made as much of supplies as possible. I became an adept at making currant wine, cider, maple sugar, molasses candy, and sausages. I used also to make the candles we burned on the place, molding them half a dozen at a time in the old candle mold, which was never absent from a country house of that day. So, in my lifetime, I have passed from the period of the tallow dip to the electric light.

From four to ten years of age I earned my own living on the old farm. I believe it is the only instance in the world where a child of four supported himself in this way. What I mean by earning my own living is, that while the expense of keeping a little youngster like me was very small, I earned more than enough to pay my way. I dressed myself. No one took care of me. I was left pretty much alone, except in the way of receiving religious admonition. I was always running errands for the men and women of the place. There was constantly something for me to do.

Moreover, I was very ambitious. I wanted to know everything that was going on about me. This has ever been my characteristic. I was born inquisitive. I have never been afraid to ask questions. If I ever saw anything I did not understand, I asked about it; and the information stuck in my mind, like a burr. I never forgot. I soon learned everything there was to be learned on the farm.

The room I slept in was a great wide one, and I slept alone. I was not afraid; but I remember the great size and depth of that cold New England room.

Life on the farm was busy enough. I often set the table and did other things that the hired girl did, and could soon do almost everything just as well as she—from setting the table to preparing a meal. All this I learned before I was ten years old. I mention these little details merely to show the difference between the life I had to lead in old New England and the life my children and grandchildren have since led.

One blessing and glory was that I had the universal atmosphere. The woods and fields were mine. I could roam in the forest and over the fields at will. The great farm was a delight to me. I was never afraid anywhere. In those days there were no "hoboes" or "hoodlums" roaming over the country. We kept no locks on our doors, or clasps on the windows. Everything was open.

On the farm, as about the house, I soon learned everything that I could. I learned to sow and reap, to plant various crops, to plow, hoe, mow, harvest. And I had a special garden of my own, where I raised a little of everything—onions, lettuce, cucumbers, parsnips, and other vegetables. I knew their seasons, the time to plant them, and when to gather them. I was an observer from the cradle. Little escaped my eyes. And I have made it a practise all through my life to master everything as I came to it.

Of books I saw little in those days. The only ones we had on the farm place, in what was termed by courtesy the "library," were the Waverley Novels, Jane Porter's Scottish Chiefs, Watts's Hymns, and the Bible. There was, of course, Zion's Herald, the religious weekly paper from Boston I have already mentioned. These were our literature. I read everything I could get hold of, and soon exhausted the small resources of the farm library.

We were so far from the village and the more frequented roads that the only persons who came to our house were peddlers, who sold us kitchen utensils, such as tin pans and buckets, and the lone fisherman, who would always sound his horn a mile away to warn us of his approach.

The old house had the usual New England parlor or drawing-room, the room of ceremony, never aired until some guest came to occupy it, or there was a funeral or baptism in it. I have never found farmers, anywhere in the world, who had any idea of ventilation. They slept in closed rooms, without any regard to health or cleanliness—for nothing is so cleansing as fresh, pure air. There was the old fireplace, with the great andirons that could sustain the weight of a forest tree, and often did. Everything was a century old, and just that much behind the day; but that was then the case everywhere in New England rural sections.

And what fires we used to have in that cavernous chimney! We would place a tremendous log on the andirons, and build a fire about it. Soon it would give out a terrific heat, but it was not sufficient to warm up the great room, into which the cold air swept through a thousand cracks and chinks. Our faces, bending over the blazing log, would be fairly blistered, while our backs would be chilled with cold. The farther end of the room would be icy cold, for drafts had free play. The house was poorly built, so far as comfort was concerned, although it was stout enough to last a couple of centuries. Not only the winds but the snow found easy entrance. If it snowed during the night, I would find a streak of snow lying athwart the room the next morning, often putting my bare feet in it as I got up in the darkness.

The ignorance of the Puritan farmers of New England was the densest ignorance that I have ever seen, even among farmers. They knew nothing, and seemed to care nothing, about the laws of health or economy. They were content to live exactly in the way their ancestors had lived for generations. They learned nothing, and forgot nothing—like the Bourbons.

This suggests to me the fact that the climate of New England has changed tremendously since I was a boy. Most old people say something like this. When I was a boy there was snow every winter and all winter. Now there is comparatively little snow. Then it used to begin in November, and we were practically shut in on our farms, often even in our houses, for the winter. For six months the snow covered the earth. When we wanted to get out, we had to break our way out with an ox-sled. The old climate of New England has gone.

When I was ten years old I began taking "truck" to the old Quincy market in Boston. It was ten miles away, but I soon got accustomed to going there alone and selling out the farm produce and vegetables. I had to get up at four o'clock in the mornings, in order to look after the horse and to harness him. He was called "Old Tom," and was a faithful, trustworthy animal.

I would arrive at the market before dawn, and would back the wagon up against the market-house and wait for the light. I fed the horse, and now and then, if the weather was particularly bad, I would put him in a stable for a few hours, at a cost of fifty cents, and feed him on oats.

After closing out the "truck," I would drive to Cambridgeport, where I bought the groceries and other supplies for the farm. My grandmother trusted all this to me. After this I got a luncheon, which cost me a "shilling cut," as it was called then—twelve and a half cents. Then I would drive home, and could give to grandmother a full and itemized account of everything, without having set down a word or a figure on paper. This went on for two or three years.

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.

CHAPTER IV

SCHOOLDAYS AND A START IN LIFE
1840-1844

I went to school, of course, for this was a part of the serious business of New England life. Our schoolhouse was two and a half miles distant, and the path to it lay across half a dozen farms and ran through the forest for a mile. There I was taught the "three R's," and nothing else. There was no thought of Latin or Greek, and, except the little 'rithmetic, no mathematics. I learned to cipher, read, and write; but I learned these rudimentary branches very rapidly. At night, in the old farmhouse, my aunts would go over the tasks of the day with me.

Our principal diversions were in the winter, when we had delightful sleighing parties. The school-children always had one great picnic. There would be a six-horse sleigh, and the teacher would be in charge of the party. We visited the surrounding towns, and it was a great affair to us. We looked forward to it from the very commencement of the school year. On examination day, at the close of the term, we children had to clean the schoolhouse. There was no janitor, as now. But we enjoyed the work, and took a certain childish pride in it.

I remember that one of my earliest ambitions was gratified at that period when I was chosen leader of the school. I stood at the head of everything. And it was no idle compliment. Boys are not, like their elders, influenced by envy or jealousy. They invariably try to select the best "man" among them for their leader. Jealousies, envy, and heart-burnings come afterward.

Reading the account of the collision between the Priscilla and the Powhatan in the Sound off Newport, this year, and the peril that threatened five hundred passengers, there came to my mind the recollection of a catastrophe that happened sixty-two years ago, and how the tidings were brought to me. I can live over again the horror of that day. I recall that it was in January, '40.

It was a stormy, bitter day, and I was in the little schoolhouse at Pond End, two and a half miles from the farm. The snow had been falling a long while, and everything was covered with it. As the day advanced, and the snow piled deeper and ever deeper about the little house, and covered the forests and fields with a thicker blanket of white, we began to grow anxious. Now and then a sleigh would drive up through the drifting, flying snow, and the father and mother of some child in the school would come in and take away the little boy or girl and disappear in the storm. I began to think, with dread, of how I, a little fellow, would be able to find my way home through the blinding snow, when suddenly there came a tap on the door. The teacher went to the door, and called to me: "George, your uncle Emery Bemis has just arrived from Boston in his sleigh, and wants to take you home with him."

When I got into the sleigh he seemed to be very sad. He sat quiet for some little time, and then turned to me and said: "George, I have some terrible news for your grandmother. She is at the farmhouse now, waiting to see her youngest daughter, your aunt Alice. Your grandmother expects me to bring her. She was coming from New York on the steamer Lexington, with the dead body of her husband [and his brother and father], which she wanted to bury in the family graveyard. There were three hundred passengers on the ship. The Lexington was wrecked and burned in the Sound, and three hundred persons were lost—burned or drowned. Your aunt was lost. Only five passengers were saved."

Such were the horrible tidings my uncle was bearing to my grandmother and my aunts, instead of the living presence they were expecting. This incident left an ineradicable impression upon my mind. There was one peculiar thing about the accident of the Lexington that struck me at the time as being weird and unforgettable. When the ship went to pieces the pilot-house was shattered, and a portion of it floated away and lodged against the rocks near the shore. The bell itself was uninjured, and still swung from its hangings, and there it remained, clanging dolorously in every wind. It seemed to my boyish fancy to be tolling perpetually for the dead of the Lexington.

Years afterward, while making a speech in a political campaign, I made use of this incident. I said the Democratic party of the day was adrift from its ancient moorings, and was always calling up something of the remote past. It was like the bell of the Lexington, caught upon the rocks that had wrecked the ship and tolling forever for the dead.

George Ripley, who was the leader at Brook Farm and, long afterward, was associated with Charles A. Dana in the preparation of the American Cyclopedia, was at one time my school-teacher on Waltham Plains. General Nathaniel P. Banks, who was a few years older than I, was chairman of our library committee. We used to have lectures in Rumford Hall. (By the way, this hall was named for Count Rumford, whom most persons take to have been a German or other foreigner, on account of his foreign title; but he was an American.) The lecture night was always a great event in Waltham. One day a man came to me and said, "Here is a remarkable letter." He read it to me, and it was as follows:

"To the Library Committee, Waltham:

"I will come to lecture for $5 for myself, but ask you for four quarts of oats for my horse.

"Ralph Waldo Emerson."

The lecture that Mr. Emerson delivered for us boys of the library committee in Waltham was entitled "Nature." We paid him $5 and four quarts of oats for it. He delivered it many times afterward, when his name was on every lip in the civilized world, and he received $150 to $500 for each delivery. He was just as great then, in that hour in the little old town of Waltham; it was the same lecture, with the same exquisite thought and marvelous wisdom; but it took years for the world to recognize the greatness and the beauty and the wisdom of him, and to value them at their higher worth. The world paid for the name, not for the lecture or the truth and beauty.

During this period I attended school for three months every summer. My grandparents wanted to make a clergyman of me. But that sort of thing was not in me. I was sent up to Mr. Leonard Frost, at Framingham, ten miles distant, and lived with him. Certainly my board could not have been more than $2 a week, and the tuition amounted to scarcely anything. I was with Mr. Frost just three months, at a total expenditure for educational purposes of about $25! This constituted my college education. I was then fourteen years old; and this is all the school education I have ever had.

The chief game we played when I was a boy was what we called "round ball," which has now developed into the national game of baseball. I was quite an adept at the game, as I took great interest always in all sports and easily excelled in them. I had also a fancy for chemistry, and my first experiment was the result of sitting down upon a bottle of chemicals. It cost me certain portions of my clothing, and made a lasting impression upon me. It effectually put an end to my desire to study chemistry further.

About this time a sweeping change came in my life. One day I happened to overhear my aunts talking about my future. The good ladies had come to the conclusion that a clergyman's life was not the life for me; so they were debating the question of sending me out to learn a trade. They said it was evident that I would not be a clergyman, a doctor, or a lawyer; so I must be a blacksmith, or a carpenter, or a mason. Now I did not want to be any of these things.

As soon as I got an opportunity I told my aunts that I did not intend to be a carpenter, or a mason, or a blacksmith. I said I was going down to Boston—not to the market, but to get a position somewhere. They were astounded. They could not believe their ears. But I went.

The city seemed bigger than ever, now that I had to face it and conquer it, or have it conquer me. But I was not beaten before the fight. I began walking through the streets with as bold a heart as I could summon, and kept searching the windows and doors for any sign of "Boy wanted." I had seen such notices pasted up in windows when I came into the town on marketing trips.

Finally I saw such a sign on a drug-store in Washington Street, and walked in. I told the druggist I should like to go to work. He offered me my board and lodging for looking after the place. I asked him what sort of clothes he wanted me to wear, and he replied that the suit I had on—my Sunday clothes—would do for every day. I was quite happy and started to work.

The first night I slept in the same building with the store, but above it. About one o'clock in the morning the bell rang. Some one wanted the doctor at once. I said I wasn't a doctor, and that the doctor was not there. The messenger ran off. This was bad enough, to be routed up in the middle of the night that way. The next day the druggist went away from the store on some business. I sampled everything edible in the place. I tried the different kinds of candy, and sirups, and then went out and bought some lemonade and a dozen raw oysters. The result may be imagined. After a few minutes of Mont Pelée, I decided that I had had enough of the drug business. I told the druggist my decision, shut the door, and left the store, a disappointed and lonely little fellow.

I hesitated as to my next step. But there was the old farmhouse—and it invited me very tenderly just then to return. I was not conquered yet, but would fight on. I turned, as if by instinct, toward Cambridgeport, the scene of my traffickings with the grocer. My uncle Clarke lived there, the uncle that had brought me on from New Orleans; but I could not make up my mind to go to him, either. The family would laugh at me. No! I would get another place—but it would not be in a drug-store!

Then I had an inspiration. There was the grocer named Holmes! Why not try him? I would. So I went to the store of Joseph A. Holmes, at the corner of Main Street and Brighton Road. To my eager inquiry, Mr. Holmes said: "You have come just in time. We want a boy." Then he asked me what wages I wanted. "Just enough to live on," I said. "You can live with us," he said; "and I will give you one dollar a week." That meant $50 a year. It was a great sum to me. I began to work at once.

This was the winter of '43-'44, and I was fourteen. My work was to drive the grocery wagon up to Old Cambridgeport, take orders, and fill them. I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to look after the horse, just as I had done on the farm, and to get everything ready for the trip. I had the orders of the day before to fill and to deliver at the college. Besides, I had to work in the store after I came back from Old Cambridgeport. In the evening I had to look after the lamps, sweep out, put up the shutters, and do numberless other little things about the store. The store was closed at ten o'clock at night. Then I would put out the lights, which were old-fashioned oil lamps.

It was a long day for a boy—or for a man. I worked eighteen hours every day. And the laborers in the Pennsylvania coal-mines are now striking for an eight-hour day! I had six hours of night in which to go to bed and to find what sleep I could. This life continued for about two years. In that time I had learned to do almost everything that was to be done about a grocery store. I had really learned this in the first six months.

One of my many little duties was to make paper bags. I had to cut the paper and paste it together. Another task was to take a hogshead of hams, put each ham in bagging, and sew it up. Then I had to whitewash each particular ham. That was a nice business! It went against my nature more than any other part of my manifold labors in the store.

Mr. Holmes was a Baptist deacon, but the only thing about him to which my youthful taste objected was that he chewed tobacco all the time. Yes, there was another objection. He insisted upon my joining the Bible class in his Sunday-school. This I would not do. I could not explain it all to him; but the Santa Claus matter had not yet worn out of my mind.

One day at the grocery store, Mr. Holmes brought in an elderly gentleman and said to me: "George, I want you to take this gentleman" (naming him) "up to the college, and walk about with him." The gentleman seemed to me to be about sixty years old. Mr. Holmes cautioned me about keeping him out of any danger, as he was not very well. "Don't talk to him," he said to me, "unless he wants to talk to you."

The thing was like a holiday to me. I walked with him up to the college, and all around, as much as he wanted to; and it never occurred to me, in all the days I was with him in this way, to find out who he was, or to think about it at all.

He was John Jacob Astor, Jr., eldest son of the founder of the great house of the Astors. He was practically an invalid. He was then in charge of a Mr. Dowse, who generally left him to the care of Mr. Holmes, and who, in turn, left him to me. After this, he came to New York, where he was taken in charge by his brother, William B. Astor.

CHAPTER V

EARLY NEW ENGLAND METHODISM

Before I get away from my boyhood days, I want to say something about the manner of my rearing in the bosom of old New England Methodism. I was reared in the strictest ways of morality, in accordance with the old system. Grandmother told me that I must not swear, must not drink intoxicating liquors, must not lie, must not use tobacco in any form. It seemed to me she was stretching out the moral law a little, and that there were fifteen, instead of ten, commandments, in the religious scheme of Methodism. And each commandment was held up to me as an unfailing precept that would make a man of me. I used to say to myself that I would be fifteen times a man, as I intended to keep them all.

But while this training was proceeding, and I was being warned against drinking and using tobacco, there were some strange inconsistencies going on side by side with the precepts. My old grandmother smoked what was known as "nigger-head" tobacco, in a little clay pipe. The pipes cost about a cent apiece. I used to cut up this tobacco for her. But as she smoked, she lost no opportunity of impressing upon me the dreadfulness of the tobacco habit.

I made bold one day to ask her why it was that she smoked, and yet told me not to smoke. She touched herself in the right side, and said, "The doctor tells me to smoke for some trouble here." But she was a very lovely old lady, and I would never write or speak a word that could harm the dear memory of the mother of my mother.

At this time, also, her father was living. I remember the old gentleman now, in his red cap, then a wonder to me, but which afterward became very familiar in Constantinople and the East as the Turkish fez. He was very aged, being then well along in the eighties. Every night I used to go up to his room and make him a toddy. He always wanted me to mix this drink for him, as I had learned to make it exactly to his taste. He had the rare consistency never to say anything to me about the immorality of drinking, nor did I ever speak to him about the matter. But one day I asked my grandmother about this "toddy." She touched her left side, and said, "It is for something here."

I could not understand it, but here were mysterious "somethings" in my grandmother's right side, and in her father's left side, that nullified the Methodist religious system and set at naught the additional commandments, "Thou shalt not drink," and "Thou shalt not smoke."

But the scheme of morality proved a good thing for me, and served to guide me aright in all my wanderings about the world and up and down in it. I think it very good testimony to the soundness and virtue of my moral training that I have wandered around the world four times, have lived in every manner known to man, have been thrown with the most dissolute and the most reckless of mankind, and have passed through almost every vicissitude of fortune, and have never tasted a drop of intoxicating liquor, and have never smoked. I have kept all of the commandments—those of Sinai and those of the Methodists.

In my period of wealth and prosperity, I have entertained thousands of men, have seen thousands drinking and drunken at my table—and under it; but I never touched a drop of my own wine or of the wine of others. I have paid a great deal of money for the purchase of all sorts of tobacco, and for all sorts of pipes—narghiles, hookas, chibouks—as presents for others; but never touched tobacco myself in any way. I have been in every rat-hole of the world—but I never touched the rats. It is for these reasons that I am seventy-three years young, and am hale and strong to-day, and living my life over again like a youth once more.

Years afterward, when I was lecturing, my cousin, George Pickering Bemis, ex-Mayor of Omaha, and my aunt Abbie and my cousin Abbie attended the one I delivered in Omaha, and all of them felt a little hurt by my allusions to the old Methodists, and to my grandmother and her father. Bemis wrote to me that they were horrified. But they forgot that what I said of the Methodists and of my ancestors was in their praise. I was not ridiculing them, but extolling them. I told of these incidents of my childhood, because I was speaking of my childhood, and these were facts. One of the strictest commandments of old Methodism was to tell the truth. They were not satisfied with the mild negative of the Sinaitic commandment, "Thou shalt not lie." They added a positive decree, "Thou shalt speak the truth." That was all I was doing. I was telling the truth about my childhood and boyhood. I have never spoken anything but the truth in all my life. This, too, I owe to the early training in Methodist virtues and precepts, and to the example and counsel of my dear old grandmother.

I could not join the Bible class, at the urgent request of the grocer, Mr. Holmes, because I could not see the necessity of God, and no one could ever explain to me the reason why there should be, or is, a God. I could never recognize the necessity. Morality and ethics I could see the necessity of, and the high and authoritative reason for; but religion never appealed to my intelligence or to my emotions. The story of the Prodigal Son only taught me that to be a Christian one must do something to be forgiven for, to repent of; and I could not see the strength of such an argument. The plain and sound "ethics" of Methodism, outside of "faith" and "belief," always seemed to me to be higher and better than this.

I feel that in an autobiography I should say this much about my moral creed and principles. Later in life the Bible got me into much trouble, involved me in persecutions, and finally landed me in jail—all of which I shall refer to in due season.

Children are born savages and cheats. It is only training that makes true and honest men and women of them. When a child of five and six, I slept with my aunt Alice, the one who was afterward lost on the Lexington. One night I saw a fourpence in her pocket-book. When I saw that she was asleep, I got up quietly, went to her pocket-book where it lay on the table and took the fourpence out of it. But I could not retain it. It seared into my conscience. Before she woke up, I went as quietly back to the purse and placed the fourpence exactly where I had found it. My Methodist training saved me.

On another occasion, my grandmother took me to Watertown to buy me a suit of clothes. In the store I noticed, while my grandmother was talking with the clerk, a lovely knife in the show-case. I wanted it. All my boyish instincts went out to that knife. I had never had a knife, and was hungry for one. I looked around, with all the inherited cunning of savage and barbarian and predatory ancestors in a thousand forests and for a hundred centuries. No one was observing me. Quietly, stealthily, I went to the case. I lifted the top, took the beautiful knife, and put it in my pocket. It was done. I had the knife, and no one would ever be any wiser. I was safe with my spoil. But again my Methodist-drilled conscience awoke. It made me go back to the show-case and replace the stolen knife. I actually felt better—for a time.

Then the appeal of nature came back stronger than before. I longed for the knife. There was no resisting the predatory impulse. Again I stole behind the counter, opened the case, took out the knife, and placed it securely in my pocket. Again it had been done without chance of detection. But again my Methodist-made conscience came to the fore. Again it saved me from being a thief. I went back to the case, and put the knife in its place, but with great reluctance. Still a third time I took the knife from the case and secreted it in my pocket, and again the Methodist conscience proved stronger than human nature, and I restored the treasure to its proper place. I was finally able to leave the store without the knife, and with a clean conscience.

These are the only instances when I started to do an evil thing, and in both of them I did not go the full length, but restored the property I coveted. Since that time, and with these exceptions, for the entire period of my life I have never cheated, stolen, or lied. And yet I have been in fifteen jails. For what?

When I was clerk in Mr. Holmes's grocery store I was in charge of the money-drawer. I received no salary from Mr. Holmes, but took out the $1 a week that I was allowed, and kept an account of it. I was trusted, and did not betray in the slightest degree this trust and confidence of my employer. Every cent that I took out of, or put into the cash-drawer was entered upon my account-book, and I was ready at any and all times to show exactly how my account stood with the store.

CHAPTER VI

IN A SHIPPING HOUSE IN BOSTON
1844-1850

The next change in my life, and the real beginning of my career as a business man, was soon to come. I had got as much out of the grocery store as it could give me, and was yearning for a change and a wider field of labor.

One day a gentleman drove up to the store in a carriage drawn by an elegant team of horses, and asked if there was a boy there named Train. Mr. Holmes thereupon called to me, and said to the strange gentleman, "This is George Francis Train." He then told me that the stranger was Colonel Enoch Train, and that he wanted to speak to me.

The first thing Colonel Train said was, "I am surprised to see you, George. I thought all your family were dead in New Orleans. Your father was a very dear friend of mine—and your mother, too." He said, as if repeating it to himself, like a sort of formula, "Oliver Train, merchant in Merchants' Row." Then he continued: "He was my cousin. But we had heard that you were all dead. Where have you been?" I told him where I had been living for the past ten years, with my grandmother at Waltham, and how my uncle Clarke had brought me back from New Orleans.

After he had made a number of inquiries of me, and I had given him all the stock of information I had, Colonel Train drove back to Boston. I watched the retreating carriage, and brave and disturbing thoughts came to me.

The following day I went to Boston. I had no very definite plan of action, but I knew that when the time and opportunity came I should find my way, as usual. And so I went directly to the great shipping house of Train & Co., at 37 Lewis Wharf. The big granite building seemed titanic to my eyes then, as if it contained the whole world of business and enterprise. When I went back to Boston years and years afterward, it seemed only a plain, ordinary affair. At first sight of it the place was simply ahead of and greater than anything I had seen. When I had outgrown it, it seemed small.

When I came up to the building, my purpose was at once clear. I walked in and asked to see Colonel Train. The colonel shook hands cordially, and said he was very glad to see me. "Where do I come in?" I asked.

"Come in?" he almost gasped at this effrontery. "Why, people don't come into a big shipping house like this in that way. You are too young."

"I am growing older every day," I replied. "That is the reason I am here. I want to make my way in the world." "Well," said the colonel, smiling at me, "you come in to see me when you are seventeen years old."

"That will be next year," I replied. "I am sixteen now. I might just as well begin this year—right away." He tried to put me off one way after another; but I was not to be got rid of. I was there, and I meant to stay.

"I will come in to-morrow," I said. Then I left, quite content with myself and the turn my venture had taken. Of the issue I had no doubt.

Early on the following day, I went to the shipping office, and took my seat at one of the desks. I sat there and waited. After a little while, Colonel Train came in. He was astonished to see me sitting there, ready for work.

"You here?" he stammered. "Have you left the grocery store?" "Yes, sir," I said; "I have learned everything there is to learn there and in fact had done so before I had been there six months. I want a bigger field to work in."

"You don't mean to say you have come here without being invited?" "As I was not invited, that was about the only way for me to come," I said. "As I am here, I might as well stay." And I settled myself in the seat at the desk.

Colonel Train looked at the bookkeeper sorely perplexed. But I saw that he rather admired my persistence and bravado. I had won the first trial of arms.

"Well," said he, after a while, turning again to the bookkeeper, "we shall see if we can find something for you to do." "I will find something to do," I said. He smiled cordially at this, and said: "I will make a man of you." "I will make a man of myself," I replied.

Then the colonel asked Mr. Nazro, who had been the firm's bookkeeper for many years, to try to find something for me to do.

It so happened that the ship Anglo-Saxon had just arrived from Liverpool, Captain Joseph R. Gordon, with goods for 150 consignees. Mr. Nazro handed me the portage bill showing the amount to be collected from each of the 150 consignees. The amounts were set down in English money, and Mr. Nazro asked me to put them into American, or Federal, money. I fancied he was setting me what would prove to be an impossible task, just to dispose of me for all time. But he blundered, if this was his purpose. I had had some experience of English money at the grocery store, having often to change it into American money.

I coolly asked Mr. Nazro what was the prevailing rate of exchange, and he replied that it was $4.80 to the pound. "That is just 24 cents to the shilling, two cents to the penny," I said, and went to work. It was then noon. It would have taken some clerks a week to do the task; but I had completed it by six o'clock that afternoon.

When I handed the list back to him, he asked, with an astonished air, if I had finished it. "You can see for yourself," I replied. "There it is, all made out properly and correctly." "How do you know it is right?" said he. "Because I have proved it," I replied.

This little task decided my fate. Mr. Nazro told me the office hours were from eight until six, with the rest of the time, the evenings, all my own.

The next morning I arrived at the office promptly, and asked Mr. Nazro what I was to do. He handed me a package of bills. I saw they were the bills upon which I had worked the day before, changing English to American currency. There were 150 of them. Each was to contain the amount that must be collected from each of the consignees. I at once set to work on this new task, and completed it in less time than it had taken me to change the money. I went with the bills to Mr. Nazro, and asked what I was to do next. He gave me a collector's wallet into which to put the bills, and told me to go out and collect the amounts due. This was a staggerer, but I set about the difficult undertaking without any feeling of discouragement.

At that time Boston was a strange city to me. It is true that I had lived on the edge of it for years; but my ceaseless work at the grocery store had kept me from roaming over the town and learning anything about it. The only section I was at all familiar with was the neighborhood of the old Quincy Market, to which I had driven so many wagon-loads of garden and farm "truck" in my boyhood days. I was as green as a genuine countryman who had come to town for the first time in his life. I knew not a soul in the city. But off I started, nothing abashed, with the great wallet of bills under my arm. I intended to succeed at this task.

I soon picked out my course through the city. I worked through street after street, and collected as I went. I did not stop, but kept steadily on, and in the afternoon found myself at the end of the list. I had collected nearly every bill.

I returned to the office and handed the wallet and money to Mr. Nazro. Again he was astonished. He asked if I had collected all the bills, and when I told him nearly all, he asked me for the list. I said I had made out none, as it was not necessary. There was all the money; he could count it, and compare with the list on his books. He was very much surprised, but counted the money, and found it correct to a cent. I did not need a list, I told him, because I could carry the whole thing in my head.

From that day to this I have done everything I have undertaken in my own way, and have found that it was the best way—at least, for me.

My next duty was to see that every one of the 150 consignees received the goods that were billed to him. This gave me opportunity for meeting a large number of important persons. Among the rest, I met Nathaniel P. Banks, who was a Custom-House official at the time, and the great writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, whom I saw in the Custom-House on a visit from Salem. He had been appointed by President Polk. Of course I knew nothing about him at the time, although he was then writing his greatest work, and perhaps was casting in his mind The Scarlet Letter. He had only just begun to be famous—an interesting fact enough, but one I did not learn till long afterward. He seemed very unassuming, and not in very affluent circumstances. I suppose his salary from the Government at the time was not more than $1,000 a year.

My life in the old shipping house of Train & Co., in Boston, lasted some four years. The first vessel that came in, after I began working with the company, was the Joshua Bates, named after the American partner of the famous house of the Barings. It was of 400 tons, quite a big ship for the time. The next was the Washington Irving, 500 tons; and the third was the Anglo-Saxon, the bills of which, on a previous voyage, I had made out in my trial under Mr. Nazro. The Anglo-Saxon was lost the following year—this was in '46—off Cape Sable, with several passengers, the captain and crew escaping. After this the Anglo-American came in, then the Parliament, the Ocean Monarch, and the Staffordshire. All of these were famous ships in their day.

In '48, I was at the pier one day on the lookout for the Ocean Monarch. Although the telegraph had been established in '44, it had not been brought from Nova Scotia to Boston, and we had only the semaphore to use for signaling. When a ship entered the harbor, the captain would take a speaking-trumpet and, standing on the bridge, shout out the most interesting or important tidings so that the news would get into the city before the ship was docked. The Persia was also due, with Captain Judkins, and it came in ahead of the Ocean Monarch. Some three or four thousand persons were on the pier waiting eagerly for the captain's news. I was at the end of the pier, and saw Captain Judkins place the trumpet to his lips, and heard him shout the tidings. And this is what I heard:

"The Ocean Monarch was burned off Orm's Head. Four hundred passengers burned or drowned. Captain Murdoch taken off of a spar by Tom Littledale's yacht. A steamer going to Ireland passed by, and refused to offer assistance. Complete wreck, and complete loss."

The captain shouted hoarsely, like a sentence of doom from the "last trump." Every one was stunned. The scene was indescribable, both the dead silence with which the dreadful tidings were received, and the wild excitement that soon burst forth.

I took advantage of the awed hush of the people, and rushed toward the street end of the pier. There I leaped on my horse that was waiting for me, and galloped off. Crossing the ferry, I went madly through Commercial Street, up State Street, and to the Merchants' Exchange. There I mounted a chair, and amid a great hush, shouted out the tidings, word for word, and in almost the exact intonation the captain had used.

One day a gentleman, looking like a farmer, came into the office and asked to see Mr. Train. I remember that it was the 5th of October, '47. I replied to his question that my name was Train. "I mean the old gentleman," he said.

I told him that Colonel Train was out of the office at the time, but that as I had charge of the ships, I might be able to attend to his business. But I added that I was in a hurry, as the Washington Irving was to sail in an hour. "That is just what I am here for," said he. "I want to sail on that ship; I want passage for England."

I told him there was one state-room left, and that he could have both berths for the price of one—$75, but that he must get aboard in great haste, as everything was ready and the ship waiting for final orders. He said he was ready, and I started to fill up a passenger slip. "What is your name?" I asked. "Ralph Waldo Emerson," he replied.

Then he took out of his pocket an old wallet, with twine wrapped around it four or five times, opened it carefully, and counted out $75. I could not wait to see whether it was correct, but threw it in the drawer, and took him on board.

Mr. Emerson was then starting on his famous visit to England, during which he was to visit Carlyle. He afterward mentioned the occurrence in his English Traits, where he said: "I took my berth in the packet-ship Washington Irving." From the moment when I thus met Emerson for the second time, I began to take great interest in him, read him carefully, and have continued to read him throughout my life. He has had more influence upon me than any other man in the world.

We once chartered the ship Franklin to take a cargo of tar, pitch, and turpentine from Wilmington, N. C., consigned to the Baring Brothers, London, and return with a cargo of freight. She was about due from England, thirty-five days having elapsed since she had started to return. By this time I had been placed in charge of all the shipping, and I was on the lookout for the Franklin. One day the news came by semaphore that a large ship had been wrecked just off the lighthouse, while coming into Boston harbor. It was not known what ship it was. The sender of the message asked if Train & Co. had a ship due. I thought at once it might be the Franklin, making a somewhat faster passage than we had expected.

The next day some of the wreckage came into the harbor, and, strangely enough, a piece of the floating timbers bore the name Franklin on it. I was at the pier when this discovery was made, and rushed at once to the insurance office to see whether the policy covering the freight had been arranged. It was all right. On the following day, to the astonishment of all Boston, the valise of one of the officers of the Franklin was washed ashore at Nantasket. In it were many letters, and among them were instructions telling how "to sink the vessel off the lighthouse, as she was fully insured." When the ship went down the captain was drowned with the rest of the crew and the passengers.

I saw at once that here was a case of barratry of the master, and that the letter would jeopardize the whole affair of the insurance. It was a matter that needed prompt and able legal work. I hastened to the office of Rufus Choate, the most famous lawyer in New England of that time. I hurriedly explained to Mr. Choate that we had lost a ship, and needed a lawyer. "Will you accept a retainer of $500?" I added. He accepted it at once, and turned to his desk to write out a receipt. I said there was no necessity for a receipt, as the check would be receipt enough, and hurried away.

I then went directly across the street to the office of Daniel Webster, who was then practising law in Boston. I was particularly anxious to have Mr. Webster retained. I remember now the roar of his great, deep voice as he responded to my knock with a "Come in" that was like a battle peal. And I recall well the picture of the great man, as I saw him for the first time. He sat at his flat desk, a magnificent example of manhood, his massive head set squarely and solidly upon his shoulders. He did not have very much business in those days, and the clients that found a way to his office were few.

"Mr. Webster," I said, "we want your services in a very important case. Will you accept this as a retainer?" I handed him a check for $1,000. He accepted it very promptly, and it seemed to me at the time that the check loomed large to him. Such sums came seldom.

One incident in the trial of the case impressed me deeply. It was the masterly manner in which Mr. Choate examined the witnesses. He had the reputation of being the most effective cross-examiner in New England. Before him, in the witness-box, stood one of the owners. Mr. Choate wanted to confuse him in his testimony as to the way in which he had done a certain thing. He began by asking the longest and most complex question that I ever heard. It wound all around the case, and straggled through every street in Boston. "You say," Mr. Choate began, "you say that you did so and so, that you went to such and such a place, that after this you did so and so, and thus and so," and he kept on asking him if after doing this and that if such and such was not the case, until there was no answering the question, or understanding it.

But Mr. Choate had tackled the wrong man for once. The man was an Irishman, and the most nonchalant person I ever saw. Nothing seemed to confuse him. While Mr. Choate was firing his complicated questions at him, he sat perfectly unmoved, unshaken. He seemed to be taking it all in. Then when the astute lawyer had finished, the witness looked at him quietly, and said: "Mr. Choate, will yez be after rapatin' that again?"

Bar and bench and spectators broke into roars of laughter. For once Mr. Choate was confused. But we won the case, as was to be expected, thanks to our matchless array of legal ability.

We had two ships engaged in making what was known as "the triangular run"—from Boston to New Orleans, New Orleans to Liverpool, and Liverpool back to Boston. They were the St. Petersburg, built in '40 for the cotton trade, and having for a figurehead the head and shoulders of the Emperor Nicholas; and the Governor Davis, named for the governor of the Bay State, whose son is now living at Newport. Once we were expecting the Governor Davis to arrive at New Orleans, where the freight rates were higher than they had been in many years—three farthings the pound. The vessel was to be loaded with cotton for Liverpool. We were elated at the prospect of big profits, when a telegram came from our agent, Levi H. Gale, at New Orleans. It read: "The Governor Davis is burned up."

Our hearts sank. A fortune had been lost, or at least the opportunity to make one. I went immediately to the insurance office to see that the policies were all right, and found them in good shape. Then it occurred to me that there might be a possibility of error in the message. Eager with my thought, I rushed to the telegraph office and asked to have the message repeated carefully, no matter what it might cost. After awhile there came back what had been a terrifying message in this new form: "The Governor Davis is bound up." The vessel was safe, and so were our profits.

My connection with the packet lines brought me into contact with many prominent business men of Boston. Very often I was able to do some little thing for them, and once a very amusing incident occurred in connection with the attempt of Mr. Milton, of the firm of Milton, Cushman & Co., to get some English pigs for breeding purposes. I had charge of the catering for our vessels, and made the purchases. Mr. Milton asked me to get him some English pigs, and I promised that we would bring some over by the very next ship. As the vessels were out for quite a time, we frequently carried live animals aboard for food, and usually hogs and pigs. It so happened that on this particular trip, when going east, one of the sows gave birth to a litter of pigs. They were taken to Liverpool. By some mistake they were brought back and delivered to Mr. Milton. He prized them very highly, until later on he discovered that they were American pigs, born under the American flag on the high seas. The mistake subjected him to much good-natured chaffing. No one forgot the incident during the old gentleman's life.

Of course, there was always present the temptation to do a little business on my own account, during my connection with the Train Packet Lines. Indeed, the desire to do this, and the experience I got in it, were the foundations of my subsequent business success. It was inevitable that I should have undertakings of my own.

My first speculation was the shipment of a cargo of Danvers onions to Liverpool in consignment of Baring Brothers. I was eager to have my first venture turn out a success. The onions were packed carefully in barrels, and I saw myself that they were in the best condition before they were shipped. I felt as if I had taken every precaution, and that I was assured of a pretty good thing. Then came the news from England: "Onions arrived; not in good order. Debit, £3 17s. 6d."

That was the disappointing result of my first venture. I was a loser. Years afterward, when I was launching shipping lines between Australia and America, I cited this little experience of mine as an example of what might be expected by many who sent cargoes to the other end of the world.

My second venture proved more successful. This was the shipping of fish on ice to New Orleans. It paid me well. But my real career as a shipper started in quite another and different way. I am ashamed to confess how I began this career, which made me a shipper of cargoes to the other end of the earth. But as I was too ignorant at the time to know much better, or, indeed, to give any thought at all to the matter, I shall, in the interest of truth, make a full confession. I became a smuggler of opium into China!

It happened in this way. One of our captains, who was about to start with a cargo for the Orient, asked me if I did not want to send over something for sale, as he thought a good profit might be made on a shipment of something in demand there. "What would be a good thing to send?" I asked. "Opium," said he laconically.

Opium meant nothing to me then. I had never thought of it in any way other than as a marketable product and an object in cargoes. So I went to Henshaw's, in Boston, and got three tins of opium, the best he had. This I placed in charge of the captain, and he smuggled it into China, and got a good price for it, to the profit of himself and me.

But the smuggling did not end there. I had instructed him to lay in a supply of curios, silks, and other oriental things, and bring them to Boston. This part of the venture was as successful as the first, and I made quite a snug little sum. It was my first considerable profit. That was in '46-'47.

I do not think any one in good standing in business has an idea now of cheating the Government out of tariff duties. I had not, at that time, the slightest idea that I was doing wrong. I felt entirely innocent of defrauding two governments, and did not realize that I was a smuggler. The wrong of the transaction I fully understood afterward.

But I fear that the moral sense as to smuggling, to use an ugly term, was not so delicate in those days. Even patriotic and good men thought that it was not very bad to bring in articles from Europe and the Orient without stopping to pay the duty levied by the United States. There was no systematic attempt to defraud the Government. There was just no thought at all, except to get in a few luxuries upon which it did not seem worth while to pay the customs dues. I can recall a few examples of this lax way of treating the tariff regulations. They were the acts of men of great social and business prominence. If done to-day, they would shock the whole country—even the Democratic and low tariff, or no tariff, part of it.

One day a banker, who was a famous figure in Boston, a leader in the world of business, asked me if I could not bring over for him some silver he had ordered sent to the Train offices in Liverpool. I consented. Shortly after this, the steward of the Ocean Monarch told me he had a very heavy package addressed to "George Francis Train." I directed him to bring it into the office. Then I saw that the heavy package was addressed, in the corner, from the shippers to this famous Boston banker. And so, without any intent to defraud the Government on my part, and, I suppose, without any intent on the part of the great banker to do a distinctly wrong act, we had actually conspired to smuggle in some exquisite silver plate for the richest banker in New England, to save a few dollars' tariff duty!

Once while I was in Paris, in '50, I wanted to buy some presents for the young lady to whom I was engaged to be married—Miss Davis—who was then living in Louisville, Ky. I called at the Paris office of a famous American firm of jewelers, and the resident agent took me to a magnificent establishment, where I saw the wealth of a world in gems.

An amusing thing happened, which I shall relate before I complete the story of this smuggling incident. I asked at once to see the most beautiful things the shop contained, the latest, and most charming. Imagine my surprise and horror when the young girl who was showing me around the shop exhibited to me a package of pictures that would have subjected me to immediate arrest and incarceration had they been found on my person in this city. She explained to me that this was the part of the business in her charge, and that she thought, as I was an American and new to Paris, I wanted to get hold of some startling pictures to carry back to the United States.

Passing through this temptation unscathed, I finally got to the jewels and gems of all sorts, and selected some for my betrothed. I bought about $1,000 worth. Suddenly the agent of an American house turned on me and said he was thinking of sending a present to his firm in New York, and asked if I would not take charge of it and deliver it, or have it delivered direct. Of course I did not know what this meant—that he wanted me to get a package of jewels to his firm without paying the tariff duty. I consented, however, before I went into the ethical question, and brought over, perhaps, a package of splendid and costly diamonds for one of the richest houses in the world.

While in charge of the ships of the house in Boston I had a little yacht, called The Sea Witch, that I used in boarding vessels in the harbor. One day there arrived a very great man, in my opinion a tower of strength in finance—Thomas Baring, afterward Lord Revelstoke, who succeeded Lord Ashburton as the representative of England in this country. I had prepared to take him on a trip around the harbor, and everything was ready for the sail the following day, when he was suddenly called to Washington, and sent me a note which read as follows:

"Dear Mr. Train:

"As I leave for Washington in the morning, I regret that it will not be possible for me to go with you on The Sea Witch to see Boston harbor. I remember with pleasure the canvasback ducks that you sent to me at London, and which gave me and my friends so much pleasure. I hope to see you on my return.

"Thomas Baring."

The great development of the clippers, the boats that soon made the reputation of the United States on the seas, was due chiefly to the discovery of gold in California. This made it necessary to send a great number of ships to the Pacific coast, and I saw that it was essential to the success of the trade to send large boats that could make profits on this long voyage.

Gold was discovered in '48. At that time our packets had attained to the size of only 800 tons. They were considered large boats at the time, but now would be called mere tubs. I saw that if we wanted to enter the trade with the Pacific we should have to get larger ships. Our first packets had been built at East Boston by Donald Mackay: the Joshua Bates, 400 tons; the Washington Irving, 500 tons; the Anglo-Saxon, 600 tons; the Anglo-American, 700 tons; the Ocean Monarch, 800 tons. In a few years we had enlarged the packet clipper from a vessel of 400 tons to one of 800 tons, or twice the size. The Ocean Monarch was regarded as a veritable monster of the seas.

When the gold-fever was setting the country frantic, and every one, apparently, wanted to go to California, I said to Mackay: "I want a big ship, one that will be larger than the Ocean Monarch." Mackay replied, "Two hundred tons bigger?" "No," said I, "I want a ship of 2,000 tons." Mackay was one of those men who merely ask what is needed. He said he would build the sort of ship I wanted. "I shall call her the Flying Cloud," I said. This is the history of that famous ship, destined to make a new era in ship-building all over the world.

Longfellow sent me a copy of his poem, The Building of the Ship, which he had written to commemorate the construction of a much smaller vessel. Not only ship-builders, but the whole world, was talking of the Flying Cloud. Her appearance in the world of commerce was a great historic event.

No sooner was the Flying Cloud built than many ship-owners wanted to buy her. Among others, the house of Grinnell, Minturn & Co., of the Swallow-Tail Line, of Liverpool, asked what we would take for her. I replied that I wanted $90,000, which meant a handsome profit. The answer came back immediately, "We will take her." We sent the vessel to New York under Captain Cressey, while I went on by railway. There I closed the sale, and the proudest moment of my life, up to that time, was when I received a check from Moses H. Grinnell, the New York head of the house, for $90,000.

The Flying Cloud was sent from New York to San Francisco, and made the passage in eighty-six days, with a full cargo of freight and passengers, paying for herself in that single voyage out and back. Her record has not been beaten by any sailing ship in the fifty-three years that have since elapsed.

The building of this vessel was a tremendous leap forward in ship-building; but I was not satisfied. I told Mackay that I wanted a still larger ship. He said he could build it. And so we began another vessel that was to outstrip in size and capacity the great Flying Cloud.

I was desirous to name this ship the Enoch Train, in honor of the head of the Boston house, and had said as much to Duncan MacLane, who was the marine reporter for the Boston Post. MacLane had usually written a column for his paper on the launching of our ships. He wanted to have something to write about the new vessel. I told him the story of Colonel Train's life, and that we were going to christen the new vessel with his name. I did not consult Colonel Train, thinking that, of course, it was all right.

The Post published a long account of the ship, and gave the name as the Enoch Train. When I went down to the office that morning Colonel Train had not yet arrived, but he soon came in, walking straight as a gun-barrel, and seeming to be a little stiff. "Did you see the Post this morning?" I asked. "Premature," he replied. That was all he said. He would not discuss the matter. I was nettled that he did not appreciate the honor I thought I was conferring on him. It was not for nothing that a man's name should be borne by the greatest vessel on the seas. I said to myself that the name should be changed at once. The ship was to be of 2,200 tons burden, larger than the Flying Cloud and the Staffordshire, both of 2,000 tons, and I decided to call her the Sovereign of the Seas.

The news that we were building a still bigger ship was rapidly circulated throughout the world. Many shipping lines wanted to buy her before she was off the ways. Despatches from New York shipping lines making inquiry as to price came almost daily. I invariably replied that we would take $130,000. But this was a little too stiff a price at that time, although the Flying Cloud had paid for herself in a single trip. I finally sold her to Berren Roosen, Jr., of Hamburg, Germany, through the brokers Funch & Menkier, of New York, for $110,000. She was entered in my name, although I was at the time only nineteen years of age. I was quite proud to have the greatest vessel then afloat on any water associated with my name. She was sent to Liverpool.

The California business had grown steadily, and the house of Train had taken a leading part in it. One of the biggest of our ships was built expressly for it, and employed on the long run from Boston to San Francisco. This was the Staffordshire, which we had named for the great potteries in England from which we got so much of our import freight. She was of the same size and tonnage as the Flying Cloud—2,000 tons. We sent her to California on her first trip under Captain Richardson, full of freight and passengers. There were three hundred passengers, each paying $300 for the trip around the Horn. This brought us in $90,000, completely paying for the cost of building and equipping, with cash in hand, before she sailed.

The Flying Cloud and the Staffordshire were followed by about forty fast clippers during the great gold-fever of '49. I was still in my teens, and consider it not an insignificant thing to have accomplished the initiation of this magnificent clipper service which revolutionized sailing vessels all over the world, and gave to America the reputation for building the fastest ships on the seas.

When the California business first opened up, I was bent upon going to the Golden Horn myself. I felt that there was to be a great development in trade and permanent business there, and wanted to "get in on the ground floor." But this was not to be, and my destiny detained me at Boston to take my share in the building of fast clippers and in developing the trade from the Atlantic side of the continent. I saw that MacKondray & Co., and Flint, Peabody & Co., who went to California about this time, were making fortunes out of commissions. I also saw men go there later to become millionaires in a few years—men like John W. Mackay, the pioneer, who died recently in London, worth somewhere approximating $100,000,000, most of it taken out of the Comstock Lode, the last of the "Big Four"—Mackay, Flood, Fair, and O'Brien—all of whom are dead. But my fortunes led in another direction. I was to go East, and not West.

In connection with the clipper service to California, I should mention here the beginning of the Irish immigration to this country, which started at the time of the gold-fever. I saw that this country was very sparsely populated, that there were vast areas entirely unoccupied, and that there was not only room, but need, for more people. I also had an eye to increasing our own business, as our ships were returning from Liverpool with very few passengers. In casting about in my mind to create business, it occurred to me that the Irish, who were particularly restive and desirous of coming to America, might be turned into passengers for our boats and into settlers of our waste places.

My first step was to engage the services of as many Irish 'longshoremen and stevedores as possible. These were always talking of their friends in Ireland, and their friends in the old country were asking them for information about the United States. I got the 'longshoremen and stevedores to scatter throughout Ireland information about this country and about the way to get here. I then set to work to arrange for giving to the poor Irish immigrants a cheap and convenient means of passage.

I invented the prepaid passenger certificate, and also the small one-pound (English money) bill of exchange. To disseminate information about the plan, I had inserted in the Boston Pilot, the Catholic organ of the day, the following advertisement, it being a letter from the Catholic archbishop:

"The Boston and Liverpool Packet Line of Enoch Train & Co. have arranged to issue prepaid passenger certificates and small bills of exchange for one pound and upward. This firm is highly respectable, and has established agencies throughout Ireland for the benefit of Irish immigrants.—☨Fitzpatrick, Archbishop of Boston."

This advertisement, and this indorsement from a high Catholic authority, gave a marked impetus to the flow of Irish immigrants into America.

CHAPTER VII

A VACATION TOUR
1850

In '50 it was decided that I should go to Liverpool to take charge of the house there. I asked Colonel Train if I could not first have a holiday, so that I might see a little of my own country. He told me to take two months, and to see as much as I could in that time. My ship was scheduled to sail July 25, '50. This was the only holiday I had had in four years.

I started for New York. After a brief stay there, I went to Cape May. My recollections of that place, which was then the great resort of the Atlantic coast, include a famous score I made in rolling ten-pins. This game was my forte, and I remember that I defeated a party of Philadelphians, scoring strike after strike, and left my score, 290, marked up on the wall. It stood unrivaled for years.

I hurried on to Washington from Cape May. The trip was then made by boat, rail, and stage. As soon as I reached Washington, I called on Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State. I was shown into his office, gave him news of New England, and said that every one was discussing his great speech of the 7th of March of that year. He looked at me inquiringly. "Some are hostile toward your sentiments," I said; "but most of the people are with you." "They are talking about it, are they?" This was the only comment he made.

Afterward he introduced me to his wife, Mrs. Leroy Webster, and asked if I would like to meet the President. I was delighted, and said so. "Just wait a moment," he said, and sat down at his desk, took a quill pen and wrote on a sheet of blue paper, nearly a foot square, "To the President of the United States, introducing a young friend of mine from Boston, George Francis Train, shipping merchant, who merely wishes to pay his respects to the president.—Daniel Webster." The large writing covered almost the whole page. I thanked him, and started at once for the White House.

On arriving there, I was at once ushered into the presence of General Taylor, who sat at his desk. The presidential feet rested on another chair. I begged him not to rise, but to let me feel at home, and handed him the letter from Mr. Webster.

At his request, I seated myself opposite him, and from this point of vantage made a hurried study of his appearance. He wore a shirt that was formerly white, but which then looked like the map of Mexico after the battle of Buena Vista. It was spotted and spattered with tobacco juice.

Directly behind me, as I was soon made aware, was a cuspidor, toward which the President turned the flow of tobacco juice. I was in mortal terror, but I soon saw there was no danger. With as unerring an aim as the famous spitter on the boat in Dickens's American Notes, he never missed the cuspidor once, or put my person in jeopardy.

My conversation—because, I suppose, it was new to him—interested him, and he would not let me go for half an hour. I told him the news of New England, and about my journey to Liverpool and its object. This particularly interested him, and he asked me a hundred questions about the shipping business and the prospects of developing trade with England.

As I was about to leave, I said to him that I prized very highly the letter from Mr. Webster, and should be very glad to be able to keep it; "and I should prize it still more highly, Mr. President, if you would add your autograph to it." "Certainly," he replied, and then took up a quill pen, and wrote "Z. Taylor." He courteously asked me to call to see him again before I left for England.

From the White House, I went direct to the National Hotel, where I asked to see Mr. Clay. I was shown up to his room, and soon stood in the presence of the great Southern orator. I observed that his shirt also bore the same marks as that of the President—stained and smeared with tobacco juice.

I told him that I was about to start for England, and that, as I had a letter signed by Mr. Webster and the President, I should like to add his signature also. "I believe that two signatures are usually necessary on Mr. Webster's paper," said Mr. Clay with a smile. He then added his autograph to the paper.

Before leaving for Liverpool, I visited Mount Vernon, of course, while in Washington, saw the Georgetown Convent, and, indeed, everything of interest in the capital at that time. Then I went back to New York and up the Hudson to West Point.

My visit to West Point was especially pleasant. I comraded with the cadets, who invited me to sleep in their tent on the campus. Among the young fellows there at the time, who was very pleasant and friendly, was Alfred H. Terry, afterward one of the most distinguished of our officers. I attended the cadets' ball at Cozzens's Hotel, messed with them, and entered into all of their sports and daily routine. I was astonished to notice that in the morning the roar of the gun did not disturb their slumbers, although it shook me from sleep. But the lightest tap of the drum aroused them instantly. It was force of habit, which, I was to learn later, enables men to sleep amid the roar of artillery on the battlefield, or amid the howling of storms on the ocean. In sleep, as in our waking hours, the trained and disciplined mind hears what it wants to hear.

From West Point I went on to Saratoga Springs. It was my first visit to these famous springs, and I enjoyed it immensely. On the boat up the Hudson I met a beautiful lady, Mrs. Carleton, who was with her sister. Mrs. Carleton was the wife of a wealthy New York merchant, who had a villa on Staten Island. I stopped at Marvin's United States Hotel. This was fifty-two years ago, and the hotel is still there, while Marvin, who entertained me more than half a century ago, died last year, his age somewhere in the nineties. I enjoyed every moment of my stay at Saratoga, for I had never seen anything of social life, and it was all new and delightful. The enormous caravansary, with its throngs of guests, its never-ceasing round of gaiety, and its own liberal life, entranced me. Manners seemed less formal then at the famous spa, and the ladies were pleased to meet any one in the most unconventional and charming way.

As I say, I was very unsophisticated. I knew little or nothing of the "great world," and I was completely horrified one evening when one of the ladies said to me in a whisper: "Can you not get me a glass of brandy?" I had never touched a drop of brandy, whisky, or even wine, and to have this beautifully dressed and refined lady ask me for a glass of brandy was a decided shock to me. I understand that now, however, it is not very uncommon for ladies to drink wine, whisky, and brandy.

I have seen it stated in the papers recently that the waters at Saratoga have the effect of lessening thirst for more ardent waters of a spirituous nature. I did not happen to observe any such effect of the waters when I was there a half century ago. Drinking was quite general, and certainly little restraint seemed to be practised.