E-text prepared by Julia Miller, Pat McCoy,
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from images generously made available by
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[Pg i]

George Francis Train. From a recent photograph.

[Pg ii]

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

[Pg iii]

Copyright, 1902

By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

Published November, 1902

[Pg iv]

MY LIFE IN MANY STATES

AND IN FOREIGN LANDS

[Pg vi]

[Pg vii]

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.[Pg viii]

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[Pg ix]
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[Pg x]
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[Pg xi]
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 Hum[Pg xii]berston,
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[Pg xiii]
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[Pg xiv]
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,[Pg xv]
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.
[Pg xvi]

[Pg xvii]

CONTENTS

• CHAPTER I
  page
• When I Was Four Years Old.          1833 2

  New Orleans then my home—All the family except myself
  perish from yellow fever.

• CHAPTER II
• My Voyage from New Orleans to Boston.        183316

  Four years old and the sole passenger—Sailors teach me to
  swear—My aunt shocked at my depravity.

• CHAPTER III
• My Boyhood on a Farm.        1833-1843 21

  My grandfather a noted Methodist preacher—My first
  money earned.

• CHAPTER IV
• Schooldays and a Start in Life.        1840-1844 35

  Leader of the school—George Ripley my school-teacher—Emerson
  comes to our village
  to lecture—Boston visited.

• CHAPTER V
• Early New England Methodism. 45

  How I was reared religiously—Ideas of right and wrong—Things
  outgrown.

• CHAPTER VI
• In a Shipping House in Boston.        1844-1850 52

  A place with my uncle—Progress rapidly made—I sell Emerson
  a ticket for Liverpool—I engage Rufus Choate and
  Daniel Webster as our lawyers—My first speculation—Building
  fast ships.

• [Pg xviii]

• CHAPTER VII
• A Vacation Tour.        185079

  In Washington I meet Webster, Clay, and President Taylor—A
  letter with their autographs that served me well.

• CHAPTER VIII
• A Partner in the Liverpool House.        1850-1852 90

  In Scotland Lord John Russell receives me, and I meet
  Lady Russell—Reform in the shipping business—Money
  we made—The Duke of Wellington—I visit Chatsworth.

• CHAPTER IX
• My Courtship and Marriage—Return to Liverpool.
         1850-1852 109

  How I first met my wife—Engaged to marry her within
  forty-eight hours—Governors in my charge—Our wedding
  and the commotion that preceded it—Phrenology.

• CHAPTER X
• Business Success in Australia.        1853-1855126

  A fine income at twenty-one—Melbourne in those days—American
  ideas introduced—Accused of stealing $2,000,000.

• CHAPTER XI
• The Gold-Fever in New South Wales and Tasmania.
         1853-1855 141

  Lucky and unlucky miners—David D. Porter—Sydney in
  those days—Free immigrants—Sir John Franklin.

• CHAPTER XII
• Other Australian Incidents—A Revolution156

  Proposed as a candidate for President—Riotous times—Curious
  incidents in business.

• CHAPTER XIII
• A Voyage to China.        1855 171

  Failure of ambitious plans—My first love of flowers—A
  remarkable Dutch colony.

• [Pg xix]

• CHAPTER XIV
• In Chinese Cities.        1855-1856 182

  Hetty Green’s husband in Hongkong with me—Pirates and
  the slave trade—Honesty of the Chinaman—Eating rats—Pidgin-English—Li
  Hung Chang on board.

• CHAPTER XV
• To India and the Holy Land.        1856204

  New ideas in religion—My early Methodism recalled—Where
  Christ was born.

• CHAPTER XVI
• In the Crimea.        1856 215

  Plans in speculation that came to naught—The war, and
  what I learned of it.

• CHAPTER XVII
• Home Once More, and then a Return to Europe.
         1856-1857221

  Boston and New York after a long absence—With my wife
  I go to Paris.

• CHAPTER XVIII
• Men I Met in Paris.        1857 226

  A ball at the Tuileries—Eugénie very gracious to me—An
  unexpected woman comes in—William H. Seward.

• CHAPTER XIX
• Building the Atlantic and Great Western Railway.
         1857-1858 237

  Queen Maria Christina’s fortune employed—Salamanca, the
  banker—How I secured a great loan.

• CHAPTER XX
• A Visit to Russia.        1857 249

  I carry a message to the Grand Duke Constantine—A dinner
  with Colonel Greig—Moscow and the Nijnii Novgorod
  fair.

• CHAPTER XXI
• Building the First Street-Railways in England. 259

  A line in Liverpool that still exists—Making a start in
  London—Better success in Staffordshire.

• [Pg xx]

• CHAPTER XXII
• England and our Civil War—Blockade Running. 271

  Speeches for the Union in London halls—A plan to end the
  war—Lincoln and Seward—Arrested for interrupting Sumner
  in Boston—Dining with Seward when Antietam was
  fought.

• CHAPTER XXIII
• Building the Union Pacific Railway.        1862-1870 283

  Early belief in such a project—The Crédit Mobilier and its
  origin—Men with whom I was
  associated.

• CHAPTER XXIV
• The Development of the Far West.        1863-1870293

  Plan for a chain of great cities across the continent—The
  creation of Omaha—Cozzen’s Hotel—Tour of the Pacific
  Coast.

• CHAPTER XXV
• The Share I Had in the French Commune.        1870301

  In Marseilles I help to organize the “Ligue du Midi” of the
  Commune or “Red Republic”—Attacked by soldiers and
  almost shot—Imprisoned and poisoned—Deported by Gambetta.

• CHAPTER XXVI
• A Candidate for President.        1872314

  “Train Villa” at Newport—Independent candidate for the
  presidency against Grant and Greeley—A tour of the country,
  in which I address hundreds of thousands.

• CHAPTER XXVII
• Declared a Lunatic.        1872-1873 323

  I defend Mrs. Woodhull—Arrested and imprisoned for
  quoting Scripture—Fifteenth imprisonment without a
  crime.

• CHAPTER XXVIII
• Around the World in Eighty, Sixty-seven, and
  Sixty Days.        1870, 1890, 1892 331

  The tour that Jules Verne used as the basis of his famous
  story—In ’90 I circle the globe in 67 days; and in ’92 in 60
  days.

[Pg xxi]

ILLUSTRATIONS

• facing
  page
• Portrait of Citizen Train made recently         Frontispiece
• Portrait of Citizen Train’s grandfather, the Rev. George
  Pickering 2
• Portrait of Mrs. George Francis Train 110
• Citizen Train in the Mills Hotel dictating his Reminiscences 200
• Citizen Train’s former residence in Madison Avenue,
  New York 286
• Citizen Train’s former villa at Newport 314
• Citizen Train with the children in Madison Square 324
• Citizen Train and his guests at dinner in the Mills
  Hotel 338

[Pg 1]

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.[Pg 2]

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
[Pg 3]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.[Pg 4]

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[Pg 5]
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.[Pg 6]

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[Pg 7]
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![Pg 8]

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[Pg 9]
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[Pg 10]
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 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[Pg 11]
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[Pg 12]
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[Pg 13]
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,[Pg 14]
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[Pg 15]
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.[Pg 16]

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[Pg 17]
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[Pg 18]
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[Pg 19]
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[Pg 20]
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?”[Pg 21]

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 atmos[Pg 22]phere
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[Pg 23]
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.”[Pg 24]

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[Pg 25]
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[Pg 26]
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[Pg 27]
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[Pg 28]
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[Pg 29]
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,[Pg 30]
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[Pg 31]
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.[Pg 32]

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[Pg 33]
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[Pg 34]
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.[Pg 35]

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[Pg 36]
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, fly[Pg 37]ing
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 ac[Pg 38]cident
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[Pg 39]
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.[Pg 40]
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 some[Pg 41]where.
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[Pg 42]
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[Pg 43]
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.[Pg 44]
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.[Pg 45]

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[Pg 46]
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[Pg 47]
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[Pg 48]
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[Pg 49]
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[Pg 50]
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[Pg 51]
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.[Pg 52]

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[Pg 53]
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 ship[Pg 54]ping
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.[Pg 55]

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[Pg 56]
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.[Pg 57]
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[Pg 58]
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[Pg 59]
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[Pg 60]
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[Pg 61]
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 light[Pg 62]house,
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 re[Pg 63]ceipt.
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[Pg 64]
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[Pg 65]
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[Pg 66]
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,[Pg 67]
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[Pg 68]
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[Pg 69]
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.[Pg 70]

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,[Pg 71]
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[Pg 72]
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[Pg 73]
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,[Pg 74]
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[Pg 75]
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[Pg 76]
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[Pg 77]
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:[Pg 78]

“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.[Pg 79]

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 Dan[Pg 80]iel
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[Pg 81]
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[Pg 82]
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[Pg 83]
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[Pg 84]
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.

I found in society, as elsewhere in the greater
affairs of life, that leadership was wanting. People
stood by and waited for some one to take the
initiative. One evening one of the ladies said to
me that the ball had not been arranged for. I
asked what ball, and she said the regular season
ball. For some reason, it had not been arranged
by the hotel people, and no one seemed disposed
to take hold of it. I said, “It should be arranged
immediately.” I saw a few of the leaders, talked
it over with them, and got them together. We
brought off the ball—my first experience in these
deep waters of social life—with great success. I
had then been in Saratoga just two days. While
I was there I had the honor of meeting the social
leader of Boston, Mrs. Harrison Grey Otis, and
the social leader of Philadelphia, Mrs. Rush.
There were also present at the Springs many rep[Pg 85]resentatives
of the most prominent families in the
social life of New York.

I saw in Saratoga the first “gambling hell”
that I had ever seen, and I was so green about such
things—another tribute to my dear old Pickering
grandmother and New England Methodism—that
I did not know what a “gambling hell” was when
asked if I should like to see one. While I possess
an inquisitive nature, I have found it a good rule
not to ask too many questions, until you have tried
to find out things without betraying your ignorance.
I went to the “hell,” and was properly
shocked. The scene suggested to me the gaming
at Monte Carlo. I saw a number of men sitting
around a table playing as intently as if their lives
depended upon the fall of a card.

My attention was attracted toward a young
man, apparently of about twenty-five, who was in
a desperate plight. Agony was visibly graved in
every feature and in every line of his face. I
asked who he was, and heard the name of a distinguished
family of northern New York. “What
is the matter with him!” I asked. My cicerone
seemed astonished at my stupendous ignorance.
“Why, can you not see they are ‘going through’
him?” he said in turn. The expressive term was
sufficient even for my unsophisticated mind. It
told the whole story, like a “scare-head” in a
“yellow” newspaper.

Then I turned from the victim to the predatory[Pg 86]
players about him. Who were they? To my surprise,
the names were those of men famous the
world over as bankers, merchants, and financiers.
There was one man that especially interested me.
It was the American representative of an English
house whose commercial paper our house frequently
used. I said to myself, “I will cut his name
from our list,” and I did—for a time. I learned
afterward that banking was only one form of
gambling. Great financiers are often clever gamesters—players
for desperate stakes, but infinitely
better players than their victims. This world of
finance is a great Monte Carlo. It was vain to
entertain a prejudice against only one of the
players.

It was now necessary for me to hurry back to
Boston in order to catch the Parliament, on which
I had already engaged passage. But before leaving
America, I wanted to see something of Canada,
and resolved upon a rapid trip to Montreal, especially
as I found that I could return to New York
that way almost as quickly as to go across the
State. I went on to Niagara, and then sailed for
Montreal, and had the novel experience of shooting
La Chine Rapids, an Indian piloting the boat.
This was a great thing in those days, and I was
amazed to see how skilfully the Indian guided the
boat in and out among the rocks, never doubtful
of his course, never touching the edges of the
reefs and boulders, never imperiling human life.[Pg 87]
I understood that for years these pilots had guided
the boats down the rapids without a single accident.

On the boat on which I went down the St. Lawrence
I met Captain Stoddard, of the Crescent
City Steam Packet, New York and Havana, and
Mr. Dinsmore, of the Adams Express Company,
with the ladies of their families. We all saw Montreal
together, and some members of the party
made excursions to places elsewhere. One of these
was to the famous Grey Nunnery, the doors of
which were closed to the outside world. But these
Americans, with true American spirit, expected
all doors to open to them, and would not accept
the situation.

When they told me of their failure to get into
the nunnery, I said I was astonished that the representative
of a big steamboat company and of a
big express company could not get into any building
they wished to enter. “I will show you what
I can do,” I said. I had already taken thought of
the talismanic letter from Daniel Webster, countersigned
by the President and Mr. Clay, the three
biggest men, in popular estimation, in the United
States at that time. As I shall afterward relate,
this letter did me a good turn later in Scotland,
opening doors to me that were closed to nearly all
the world. It was now to serve me well; but this
was the first time I had found occasion for its
service since leaving Washington.[Pg 88]

I went immediately to the nunnery, where I
asked to see the Lady Superior. I told her I had
visited the Convent of the Sacred Heart at New
York and Georgetown, and that I wanted to see
how they compared with this most famous convent
in Canada. This did not impress her very
much, it seemed to me, and I instantly had recourse
to my letter. “As you do not know me,” I said,
“this letter may serve as a sort of introduction.”
Then I brought out with a flourish my Webster-Taylor-Clay
letter. The doors at once flew open
before me! After viewing the interior of the nunnery,
I told the Lady Superior that I had a party
of friends at the hotel who would like very much
to see the building, and that if she would permit
me, I should like to bring them around in the
morning. She consented, and the next day I took
the entire party to the nunnery and we were shown
through by the Lady Superior.

My time was now running short, and I had to
hasten back to New York, if I wanted to catch the
Parliament. I went by way of Lake Champlain,
Ticonderoga, and Lake George, and again saw
something of Saratoga and the Hudson. At Ticonderoga
I had the good fortune to meet Bishop
Spencer of Jamaica, and his son-in-law Archdeacon
Smith, and we traveled together to Saratoga.
Here we met Commodore Trescot, of the
Bermuda Yacht Club. I invited them all to dine
with me at the George Hotel, at Lake Sara[Pg 89]toga.
I was struck by the bishop’s dress, for it
was the first time I had seen the black knickerbockers
and the three-cornered chapeau. I do not
mention the dinner—which was not a great affair—merely
for the sake of referring to the knickerbockers
or the chapeau, but because the bishop
pressed upon me a special invitation to call upon
him when I came to London.[Pg 90]

CHAPTER VIII

A PARTNER IN THE LIVERPOOL HOUSE

1850-1852

From Saratoga, I went down the Hudson
to New York, and thence to Boston, where I arrived
in time to take the Parliament, Captain
Brown, on the 25th of July. I had lived fast in
the eight weeks of my holiday. It was the only
vacation I had had since I had begun my business
life as a grocer boy in Holmes’s store, and I had
worked hard during that long period. The result
was that I sprang back too far, like the released
bow, and was soon to see the effects. As my time
was so limited, I had tried to make the most of it,
and had rushed from place to place, had lived in
all sorts of hotels and eaten all sorts of food.
Besides, the travel, all of which had been in a
whirl of excitement, aided in upsetting my physical
system.

A few days on the boat were enough to complete
the wreck. I was as badly shaken up as Mont
Pelée, and was ill for most of the voyage. When
I reached Liverpool, I had lost thirty pounds, and[Pg 91]
had to be taken off the steamer, and was carried
to the house of Mr. Thayer, the Liverpool partner
of Colonel Train. It was two or three months before
I completely recovered.

I had hardly reached England before I began
to realize that the people there use a somewhat
different version of the English language than we
are accustomed to in America. My physician was
Dr. Archer. He came to see me one morning just
after I had had my breakfast, and took his stand
immediately before the fire, with his back to it.
“I am half starved,” he said. I immediately rang
the bell, and when the servant came turned to
the physician and asked what he would have
for breakfast. He said he had eaten breakfast
and did not want anything more. “But,” said
I, “you said you were half starved; surely
you must be hungry.” He burst into a roar of
laughter. “I meant that I was half starved with
cold.”

With this as a beginning, I began to pick up
the vocabulary peculiar to the modern English.
My next acquisition was “nasty.” I was informed
that a rather disagreeable day was a very “nasty”
day, and that the weather was simply “beastly.”
After mastering these three words, which were entirely
new to me, and adding such words as I could
pick up from the daily speech of the men I met, I
was soon able to get along in some fashion with the
English of England.[Pg 92]

My first British holiday was spent in Scotland,
where I stayed for a week. When I was at
Balmoral the Queen happened to be there. Leaving
Balmoral, I went to Braemar, on the way to
Aberdeen. A number of young students were
there at the time, and I spent some moments talking
with them. Suddenly, there was a tremendous
uproar and excitement, and I saw a four-in-hand
drive up. The students informed me that it was
the Premier, Lord John Russell, who had just returned
from an audience with the Queen at Balmoral.
I saw there was a chance for some sport.
Turning to the students, with a smile, I said: “I
wonder how his lordship knew I had come to
Braemar! I hope to have the pleasure of speaking
with him.”

The students laughed satirically. One of them
said: “Look heah, Mr. Train, that sort of thing
won’t do heah, you know. We don’t do things as
you do in America.” Another suggested that I
should not be treated very civilly if I attempted to
approach Lord John Russell.

For reply, I took out a card and wrote on it:
“An American, in the Highlands of Scotland, is
delighted to know that he is under the same roof
with England’s Premier, Lord John Russell, and,
before he goes, would ask the pleasure of speaking
with his lordship for a moment.” I carefully folded
the card in the letter that had been given to
me by Mr. Webster, and afterward signed by the[Pg 93]
President of the United States and Henry Clay. I
sent the two in to his lordship.

In a few minutes the door opened, and the secretary
of Lord John Russell came in and asked
for “Mr. Train.” I said I was Mr. Train. “Lord
John Russell,” replied the secretary, “waits the
pleasure of speaking with Mr. Train of Boston.”
I followed him out of the room, to the amazement
of the young students, who didn’t do things that
way in England.

His lordship received me with that easy grace
and courtesy which I have always observed in Englishmen
of high rank. I told him I would not take
up any of his time, and that I merely wanted to
meet him. He made me talk about the United
States, and insisted upon introducing me to his
wife. She, also, received me graciously, saying
she was “always glad to see Americans.” She
asked me many questions about this country and
especially about Niagara Falls. A half hour
passed by before I was aware of the time. I
begged pardon for staying so long, and left.

In my book, Young America Abroad, I have
referred to this incident and to the courteous reception
I met at Braemar. When I had gone
around the world, and returned to America, and
was at Newport with Colonel Hiram Fuller, in ’56,
there came to me in the mail one morning a coroneted
note. It was from London, and written by
Lady Russell.[Pg 94]

“It was so kind of you,” it said, “to remember
us at Braemar, and to send us your Young America
Abroad, which his lordship and I have read
with a great deal of pleasure. When you come
to London, come to see us.—Fannie Russell.“

Our Liverpool office was at No. 5 Water Street,
George Holt’s building. As soon as I was able to
look after the company’s interests, I went down to
the office and took charge. Mr. Thayer returned
to Boston, and later to New York. This left me
in complete control. At twenty years of age, I
was the manager of the great house of Train &
Co., in Liverpool.

I at once began to reorganize things in Liverpool,
and to develop our business. I put on two
ships a month between Liverpool and Boston, and
arranged the James McHenry line to Philadelphia,
and sent transient ships to New York. We
also had what was known as the “triangular line,”
handling cotton and naval stores.

Liverpool I found to be a great port, but very
much belated. It was too conservative, and the old
fogies there were quite content to keep up customs
that their ancestors had followed without trying
to improve upon them, or to introduce new
and better ones. I set to work to improve everything
in our business that was susceptible of improvement.

I was astonished, the very first day after I
reached the office, to learn that nothing was done[Pg 95]
at night. The entire twelve hours from six in the
afternoon to six the following morning were absolutely
lost, and this in a business that requires
every minute of time in the twenty-four hours.
Ships can not be delayed, held at ports for day-light,
or laid up while men sleep. The work of
loading and unloading must proceed with all despatch,
if there is to be any profit in handling the
business, and ships must be sent on their voyages
without loss of valuable time. I had supposed
that the English shippers thoroughly understood
these simple principles of the business in which
they have led the world.

Our vessels were very expensive, and we could
not afford to lose the twelve hours of the night.
That much time meant a profit to us, and I determined
to utilize it. What was my surprise, when
I went to the proper authorities, to find that we
should not be allowed to light up the Liverpool
docks at night, or to have fires on them. It was
feared that we should burn the structures and
destroy the shipping and docks. These dignified
gentlemen even laughed at me for suggesting such
a foolhardy undertaking.

I said to myself, there is always one way to
reach men, and I will find the way to reach these
dignitaries. It occurred to me that I could reach
them most surely through a plea for the prosperity
of the port. I went at once to the representatives
of all the American lines having offices in Liverpool,[Pg 96]
to organize them into a combined attack on the
Liverpool port authorities. I saw Captain Delano
of the Albert Gallatin, Captain French of the
Henry Clay, Captain West of the Cope Philadelphia
line, Captain Cropper of Charles H. Marshall’s
Black Ball line, Zerega of the Blue Packet
line, and others, and we decided upon asking the
dock board to give us a hearing. This the board
very readily consented to do.

Prior to this meeting, I went to all the American
representatives and outlined my plan of campaign.
This was to say very plainly to the dock
board that unless we could have fires and lights
on the docks we would take the shipping to other
ports. The captains and others were astonished,
but they agreed to let me approach the board with
this plain threat.

I then went to the board, with all the representatives
of the American lines, and quietly told
the members that we wanted fires and lights on
the docks at night, that we needed this in order to
carry on our business in our way, and that unless
we could have them, we should at once go to other
ports. Abandoning a mood of amused laughter,
these gentlemen suddenly became very serious.
Their hoary customs did not seem so sacred then,
and they ended by throwing a complete somersault,
and granting us full permission to light up
the Liverpool docks at night.

Of course this made a tremendous difference[Pg 97]
to all of us. We could now load our ships at night,
thus saving one half of the twenty-four hours,
which we had been losing. I understand that the
Morgan combination, fifty-two years after this,
has again forced concessions from the Liverpool
dock board by threatening to take the ships to
Southampton.

Our principal freight from Liverpool at that
time consisted of crockery from the Staffordshire
potteries, Manchester dry-goods, and iron and
steel, and what were known as “chow-chow,” or
miscellaneous articles. We often had as many as
150 consignees in a single cargo. Our principal
business connections were the firms of John H.
Green & Co. and Forward & Co., who shipped pottery;
Bailey Brothers & Co., Jevons & Co., A. &
S. Henry & Co., Crafts & Stell, Charles Humberston,
and John Ireland. Our passenger agent was
Daniel P. Mitchell, 18 Waterloo Road.

The first blunder that I made in Liverpool—and
the only serious one, I believe—was in connection
with shipping emigrants to the United
States. One day a man came into the office and
said he was from the estate of the Marquis of
Lansdowne, and wanted to contract for the shipment
of 300 passengers for New York. We soon
came to terms, and I chartered the ship President.
We charged the Marquis from £3 15s. to £4 a head.
I learned afterward that these passengers were
poor tenants of his estates. The Marquis of that[Pg 98]
time was the grandfather of the present Marquis
of Lansdowne, Minister of War in the Salisbury
cabinet.

At that time we had to pay $2 a head for all
immigrants entering the country. I had tried to
get this changed, through Mr. Webster, but had
failed. We had also to give bond that the immigrants
would not become a public charge. It
proved a very expensive contract for us, as we
had to bring back many of these paupers for the
old Marquis to take care of.

When I left Boston, I had taken a partnership,
one sixth interest, in the house of Train & Co. In
Liverpool I had twenty-five clerks under me, and
at one time had four ships in Victoria Docks. It
may be inferred that I conducted the business with
some degree of success, as my interest—one sixth—for
the first year was $10,000. Next year, when
in London, I was invited to a grand reception
given by Abbott Lawrence, 138 Piccadilly, who
was then United States minister at the court of
St. James’s. That day I dined with Lord
Bishop Spencer of Jamaica, whom I had met in
Saratoga, and took Lady Harvey in. This was my
acceptance of the invitation he had extended to
me in Saratoga. The bishop asked if I was going
to the reception of the American minister that
night, and, on my saying that I was, asked me to
accept a place in his carriage. This I very gladly
did, as I had, by this time learned a great deal[Pg 99]
about the value of state and ceremony in English
life. The sequence will show how this worldly
wisdom served me.

At the dinner, however, I had had a very narrow
escape. It was the “closest call,” as we say in
the West, that my temperance Methodist principles
ever had. I was asked, as a great mark of
distinction, to taste the pet wine of the bishop.
The bishop himself acted as chief tempter of my
old New England principles. He handed me a
glass, saying: “Mr. Train, this is the wine we call
the ‘cockroach flavor.’ I want you to drink some
of it with us,” and he glanced around his table, at
which were seated many titled Englishmen and
women.

What was I to do? Should I, caught in so dire
an emergency, drown my principles in the cup that
cheers and inebriates? Was all my Methodism
and New England temperance to go down in shipwreck?
The exigency nerved me for the task, and
I found a courage sufficient to carry me through.
I had never tasted a drop of wine, and I was not
going to begin now. I glanced about the room,
and slowly raised the glass to my lips. I did not
taste the wine, but the other guests thought that I
did. “We all know,” I said, “that the wine at
your lordship’s table is the best.” This passed
without challenge, and, in the ripple of applause,
my omission to drink the wine was not observed.

Later in the evening I went with the bishop[Pg 100]
to the American minister’s reception, and soon
saw how well it was that I was in his lordship’s
carriage. Had I been in a hired cab, I should have
fared badly. I should have had to wait in the long
line of these vehicles, while flunkeys called out, in
stentorian tones as if to advertise all London of
the fact that you were in a hired concern, “Mr.
Train’s cab!” and other flunkeys, down the line,
would take up the cry, “Mr. Train’s cab!” until
one would sink in a fever of chagrin. But as I
came in the bishop’s carriage, I heard respectful
voices announce, “Lord Spencer and Mr. Train.”

I observed several ladies bending over an elderly
gentleman, and soon another lady asked me
if I had seen the duke. As there were two or three
dukes present, I asked which one. She looked very
much surprised, as if there could be more than one
duke in the world. “Why, the Duke of Wellington!”
she exclaimed.

I now took occasion to get a good look at the
venerable old man. It was the first time, and
proved to be the only time, I ever saw him. He
would not have impressed me, I think, had it not
been for the light of history which seemed, after
I once knew it was he, to illuminate his face and
frame. It was the last year of his enjoyment of
great renown. He died shortly afterward.

While in England, I availed myself of every
opportunity to see the country, and study it from
every possible point of view. I may add that this[Pg 101]
has been my invariable custom in all countries.
I have gone through the world as an inquirer and
an observer of men and things. As I had visited
Scotland, I was desirous of seeing another of the
islands, Wales, so I ran down into that curious
country on a vacation, in 1850. I went to Bangor,
on the Menai Straits, and hardly had got into the
hotel when a tremendous commotion in the corridors
told me that some guest of unusual importance
had arrived. I asked who it was, and was
informed that it was the Duke of Devonshire.

“That is exceedingly fortunate for me,” I said.
“There is no man that I would rather see at this
moment than the Duke of Devonshire.” At this,
my companions—among whom were young Grinnell,
of Grinnell, Bowman & Co., whose father sent
the Resolute to find Sir John Franklin, young
Russell, and young Jevons, an iron merchant—began
laughing immoderately. I wrote on a card
that an American, who happened to be at the
George Hotel when he arrived, would like to see
him, if it would not be too great an intrusion upon
his time. I added that it had been one of the desires
of my life to visit his famous estate at Chatsworth.

This note I sent to the duke by a messenger.
Immediately came back a reply that the duke
would be very glad to see me, and I was ushered
into his presence. He was then an elderly man,
his voice tremulous and uncertain. To make it[Pg 102]
still more difficult to converse with him, he was
deaf, but used an ear-trumpet. I succeeded in telling
him that his palace at Chatsworth was well
known throughout America by reputation, and
that I should like very much to see it, while I was
in that part of Great Britain. He replied that I
must certainly see it before leaving. He then
called to his secretary to bring him a blue card,
and wrote upon it a pass to enter the grounds and
buildings. This was all very kind, and I thanked
him for the courtesy.

He then completely stunned me by saying:
“You must see the emperor!” I knew that the
Czar of Russia had been his guest, but it was not
likely that he was at Chatsworth at that time; so
I endeavored to divine what the duke meant. My
mind ran over horses, conservatories, and dogs.

I could not, for a moment or two, imagine what
“the emperor” could be, and was about to commit
myself irrevocably to a conservatory, a favorite
horse, or hound; but before making any remark
gave him an appreciative smile which seemed to
please his grace. He called for the blue card
again, and wrote on it: “Let the emperor play for
Mr. Train.” I learned afterward that it cost the
duke $500 to have “the emperor” play, and so
much the more appreciated his courtesy. I remarked
that I had heard “the emperor” referred
to as the highest fountain in all Europe.

As soon as I got back to Liverpool, I made up[Pg 103]
a little party to visit Chatsworth. When we
reached the station I was astonished to see almost
a regiment of uniformed servants waiting to meet
us. I was even more astounded when the head of
this body-guard of retainers approached and asked,
in the most deferential manner: “When will your
royal highness have luncheon?” I saw, of course,
that they were taking me for some one else, and
remarked that they were perhaps waiting for the
arrival of the Prince of Hesse-Cassel, whom I had
just seen at the hotel. The prince came up almost
immediately afterward, and had the pleasure of
seeing “the emperor” play, by special authority,
on my card from the duke.

The palace is a magnificent residence, so far
exceeding anything of the kind in England at that
time, that George IV. is said to have felt offended
when invited there, because his own residence was
shabby in comparison. I made the acquaintance at
Chatsworth of Sir Joseph Paxton, who the following
year modeled the entire glass system of the
first Crystal Palace at London. I was to see something
of the Crystal Palace the next year.

Six years after this, when I published my book,
Young America Abroad, I sent a marked copy to
the Duke of Devonshire, and he wrote me a letter
in which he said: “I am an old man now, sixty-two,
but I have not forgotten the delightful day
when I met you on the Menai Straits.”

One day, in my office in Liverpool, I received[Pg 104]
a card from the Secretary, inviting me to the
exhibition in London, and Mr. Riddle of Boston,
who was then on his way to London, asked me to
be present on the day when the Queen was to come,
which was the day before the opening. I went to
London, and that was the first and the only time I
ever saw Queen Victoria. She was with Prince
Albert, and they were accompanied, I remember,
by a brilliant staff.

I recall an incident during my visit to London
on this occasion which aptly illustrates the
want of suggestiveness on the part of Englishmen.
They are content to go along in old ruts, provided
only they be old enough. Frank Fuller was the
contractor for the Crystal Palace, and a problem
arose, in the construction, as to what to do with a
certain beautiful and aged elm that had been an
object of reverence and stood in the way of the
proposed building. It had finally been decided to
cut it down, in order to get it out of the way.

“What!” said I, “cut it down—this exquisite
tree?” Some one remarked that the authorities
did not wish to cut it down, but it stood directly in
the way of the great palace, and would have to be
sacrificed. “The palace is here for time,” I said,
“and this tree may be here for eternity. Spare
the tree.” “But how?” they asked. They were
bewildered—did not have a thought of what to do,
except to hew down the venerable tree. “Build
your palace around it,” I said. This simple[Pg 105]
device had not occurred to them, but it saved the
elm.

Mr. Fuller was so pleased by the suggestion,
that he began asking me about hotels in America,
and proposed that I undertake the building of an
American hotel in London. I said that some time
I should, perhaps, try the experiment, but that for
the present my shipping business would keep me
fully occupied.

I might as well mention here, although it is not
in its chronological order, my later experience in
trying to establish an American hotel in London.
It was seven years after the exhibition when the
question of an American hotel came up again. I
had worked up the plan very thoroughly, and had
some of the most prominent and influential men
in England as directors of the proposed company.
We had, also, obtained options on several acres of
desirable land in the Strand as a site. In the
board of directors was Lord Bury, private secretary
of the Queen, son of the Earl of Albemarle;
Mark Lemon, of Punch; and others. The only
obstacle to our success was the passage of a bill
through Parliament authorizing us to occupy the
land. The hotel caused a great sensation in London,
and there was much talk of it as a daring and
not altogether agreeable invasion of England by
Americans. On the other hand, there was much
commendation, and George Augustus Sala, the
leading editorial writer of the Telegraph, wrote a[Pg 106]
letter in which he mentioned my name as a guaranty
that the hotel would be built and would succeed,
as, he said, I had succeeded in everything.

Matters were well advanced, and it looked
as if we should have the hotel. I wanted it constructed
along distinctly American lines, and sent
to Paran Stevens to get from him the plans of his
three hotels, the Revere House in Boston, the Fifth
Avenue Hotel in New York, and the Continental
in Philadelphia. We had everything in readiness,
when the news came that the bill had failed in the
House of Lords by sixteen votes, although the
House of Commons had passed it. I came as near
as that to building the first American hotel in London.
Fifty years later, the Hotel Cecil was built,
a half century after I had suggested the idea and
perfected the plan.

My experience in Saratoga had revealed to me
the want of suggestiveness and resource in men in
general. They will continue doing the same thing
in the same old way generation after generation,
without taking thought for improving methods in
the interest of economy, of time, and of money. I
have, from time to time, suggested a large number
of little improvements, mechanical or other devices,
for which I have never taken out patents or
received a cent of profit in any way. I shall bring
together here a few of these suggestions, made at
different times and in different countries.

I used to go to the old cider-mill at Piper’s,[Pg 107]
about a half mile from our farm. We went in an
ox-cart, filled with apples. When we got to the
cider-mill, all we had to do was to pull out a peg,
and the apples would roll out into the hopper of
the mill.

When I came to New York years afterward I
was astonished to notice that there were a half-dozen
men around every coal-cart, unloading the
coal. I thought of the ox-cart, the peg, and the
hopper, which I had used thirty years before. I
suggested the use of a device for letting the coal
run from the cart into the cellar, but could not get
any one to listen to the proposition. Now, years
after my suggestion, all of these carts in New
York and other large cities of America have small
scoops running from the cart to the coal-hole, and
a single man unloads the cart by winding a windlass
and lifting the front end of the wagon. In
London they still keep up the old, clumsy, and expensive
method of unloading with sacks. The
English are in some things where we were a century
ago.

Once in London I was astonished to see a man,
after writing something with a lead-pencil, search
through his pockets for a piece of india-rubber
with which to erase an error. He had lost it, and
could only smudge the paper by marking out what
he had written. I said to him: “Why don’t you
attach the rubber to the pencil? Then you couldn’t
lose it.” He jumped at my suggestion, took out a[Pg 108]
patent for the rubber attachment to pencils, and
made money.

When Rowland Hill, the great English postal
reformer, introduced penny-postage into England,
he found it necessary to employ many girls to clip
off the stamps from great sheets. I took a sheet
of paper to him, and showed him how easy it
would be by perforation to tear off the stamps as
needed. He adopted my idea; and now a single
machine does the whole work.

I noticed one day in England a lot of “flunkeys”
rushing up to the carriages of titled ladies
and busying themselves adjusting steps, which
were separate from the carriage, and had been
taken along with great inconvenience. I said to
myself, why not have the steps attached? and I
spoke about the idea to others. It was taken up,
and carried out. Now every carriage has steps
attached as a part of the structure.

In ’50, I was with James McHenry in Liverpool,
and in trying to pour some ink from a bottle
into the ink-well, the bottle was upset, and the ink
spilled all over the desk. This was because too
much ink came from the mouth. “Give the bottle
a nose, like a milk pitcher,” I said; “then you can
pour the ink into the well easily.” Holden, of
Liverpool, took up the idea, and patented it, and
made a fortune out of it.[Pg 109]

CHAPTER IX

MY COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE—RETURN TO
LIVERPOOL

1850-1852

After the first short stay in Saratoga during
my vacation trip in America, I had started for a
journey West; and was soon to meet with an experience
that turned the current of my life. At
Syracuse I saw a half dozen students talking to a
lovely girl, bidding her good-by. Her appearance
struck me in a peculiar way. I turned to Alfredo
Ward, who, with his wife, was traveling with me,
they having just come from Valparaiso, Chili.
“Look at that girl with the curls,” said I. “Do
you know her?” he asked. “I never saw her before,”
I answered, “but she shall be my wife.”

I was quite ready to abandon the remainder of
my Western trip, to get an opportunity to meet
this girl. Taking my grip up hurriedly, I rushed
over to the train she was on, supposing she was
going to New York. I soon discovered that she
was going the other way, and ran through in my
mind the chances I could take, the risks I could[Pg 110]
run, and so took an opportunity by the throat. I
knew that I was not compelled to leave Boston until
July 25, and so I had ample time to get to my
ship.

I entered the car where the girl was, and found
a vacant seat opposite her. An elderly gentleman
was with her, whom I took to be her father. I
selected the seat opposite with the deliberate purpose
of making the acquaintance of the pair at the
first opportunity that occurred or that I could
create.

My chance came sooner than I expected. The
elderly gentleman tried to raise the sash of the
window, and could not move it; it had, as usual,
stuck fast. I sprang lightly and very quickly
across the aisle and said, “Permit me to assist
you,” and adding my youthful strength to his,
raised the window. Both he and the young lady
thanked me. The old gentleman went further and
asked me to take the seat directly opposite him
and the young lady, on the same side of the car.
I did so, and we entered into conversation immediately.
I continued my speculations as to the
relationship that existed between them. The gentleman
seemed rather elderly for her husband, and
she too young to be married at all. He did not look
exactly as if he were her father.

Mrs. George Francis Train.

Before I could determine this question for myself,
he came to my assistance, and told me the
young lady was the daughter of Colonel George
[Pg 111]T. M. Davis, who was captain and aide-de-camp,
under General Scott, in the Mexican War, and
afterward chief clerk in the War Department at
Washington. He introduced himself as Dr. Wallace,
and said that he was taking Miss Davis to
her home in the West. I also learned that they
were going to Oswego, where they would take a
boat. I immediately exclaimed that I, also, was
going in that direction, and was delighted to know
we should be fellow passengers. In such matters—for
love is like war—quickness of decision
is everything. I would have gone in any
direction, if only I could remain her fellow passenger.

And so we arrived at Niagara Falls together.
Dr. Wallace was kind enough to permit me to escort
his charge about the Falls, and I was foolish
enough to do several risky things, in a sort of half-conscious
desire to appear brave—the last infirmity
of the mind of a lover. I went under the Falls
and clambered about in all sorts of dangerous
places, in an intoxication of love. It was the same
old story, only with the difference that our love
was mutually discovered and confessed amid the
roaring accompaniment of the great cataract. We
were at the Falls forty-eight hours, and before we
left we were betrothed.

Soon afterward I sailed for London, as already
set forth. It was not till ’51 that I came back to
America, principally for the purpose of marry[Pg 112]ing
Miss Davis and taking her back to England
with me.

I arrived in Boston shortly before the celebration
of Bunker Hill Day, which was always a great
occasion in that city. General John S. Tyler was
grand-marshal of the day, and he appointed me
one of his aides. It was a time when young people
were usually left out of all public business arrangements.
Only the middle-aged or old took
part in anything of the spectacular nature in this
great parade. Probably I attracted a great deal
of attention, therefore, because of my youth, being
then only twenty-one.

In truth, I felt a little flattered by the appointment,
and determined to make as good a show as
possible. Having been born and reared on a farm,
I knew how to ride, so I got the stableman to give
me the finest stepper he could furnish. He found
a beautiful animal, with a frolicsome spirit, and
I felt that I should prove at least a good part of
the exhibition. I was decked in a flowing red,
white, and blue sash that swept below the saddle-girths,
and my horse was a proud-looking and
dainty-paced beast. With a little rehearsing of my
part, I was fully prepared.

On the occasion of the parade, I am quite sure,
I was the observed of many observers. The spectators
were let into the mystery of the beautiful
caracoling and dancing of my horse, whom I
touched occasionally with the spur in a particular[Pg 113]
way, and who acquitted himself with great credit.
The populace thought he was trying to unseat me,
or to run away, and that it was only by excellent
horsemanship that I was able to hold my seat and
look like a centaur. I am ashamed to say, at this
far distance in retrospect, that it was a proud moment
for me, and that I took so much pleasure in
so idle and empty a show. But youth must be
served.

I had charge of the Colonial Governors, who
were the guests of the city, and of the President,
and I escorted them from Boston to Charlestown.
There were Sir John A. MacDonald, of Canada;
Governor Tilly, of New Brunswick; the Honorable
Joseph Howe, ex-Governor of Nova Scotia;
and Millard Fillmore, President of the United
States. President Fillmore and Sir John MacDonald
rode on the back seat of the first carriage,
and Howe and Tilly on the front seat. Somehow,
Boston seemed to regard the colonial officials as
equal to, if not a little better than the President.
I suppose this was because of the sentiment of
Bunker Hill, and because the presence of British
representatives was a matter of pride and gratification.

But the day was to end in gloom. As I was in
the midst of the gaiety and at the height of my
exultation, a messenger handed me a despatch. I
tore it open, and found that it was from a friend in
Louisville, Ky., and contained a warning. Miss[Pg 114]
Davis, to whom I was betrothed, lived in Louisville,
and I was soon to marry her there. The
telegram urged me to hasten my journey, as the
report of the coming marriage had created a great
deal of bad feeling. My friend advised me to lay
aside everything and go to Louisville with all possible
despatch.

I could not imagine, at first, what this meant.
It seemed to convey only some presage of disaster.
I left the gay scenes of the parade and hurried
to my room at the hotel. There I made instant
preparation for a trip to Louisville.

Before leaving Boston, however, I learned
what it was that had caused my friend in Louisville
so much concern. Some time before, there
had been a marriage of a Kentucky girl with a
Northerner—the much-talked of wedding of Bigelow
Lawrence and Miss Sallie Ward. It had
aroused a great deal of bitter feeling, because of
the increasing tension and friction between the
North and the South. This was none of my
affair; nor did I share the feeling on either side.
Indeed, at that time, I knew little and cared less
about the sectional differences between the North
and South. The only interest I had in the South
at that time was a commercial one in our shipping
business, and the more personal interest attaching
to that portion of the South that held my future
wife.

My own approaching marriage to Miss Davis[Pg 115]
had, it seems, been regarded as of sufficient importance
to arouse the same feeling that had been
created by the Lawrence-Ward marriage. My
friends were manifesting much solicitude. What
most alarmed them was the fact that a number of
gallant Kentuckians were trying to marry Miss
Davis themselves, and thus patriotically save her
for the South. Among these patriots were Senator
James Shields, Mexican hero of Belleville,
Ill., Lieutenant Merriman of the navy, and an
officer of the army. There was, also, a suitor
from my side of the line—”Ned” Baker, of
Springfield, Ill., who was afterward United States
consul-general at Montevideo. In her letters
to me she had mentioned all of these gentlemen,
but I was not particularly anxious about the
matter, feeling that there was safety in numbers.
But now that my friends were interesting themselves,
I thought it full time that I should be looking
after affairs myself.

I was doomed to suffer from the inconsistency
of woman. When I reached Louisville I wrote to
her, mentioning the reports sent me by friends.
This angered her. She became indignant because
I had taken any notice of these rumors, and refused
to see me on that day. But on the following
day she was in a milder mood, ready to see me.
This meeting put to rest forever all doubts, suspicions,
and jealousies, and my fears melted into
thin air.[Pg 116]

But for all this, I was determined to take no
further chances with three or four rivals, and decided
that I should not again leave my affianced
bride behind me. I insisted upon an immediate
ceremony, and we were married by the rector of
the Episcopal church in Louisville, October 5,
’51. Her father, Colonel George T. M. Davis,
was then editor of Haldeman’s Louisville Courier.
Belle Key, the famous Kentucky beauty, whose
sister, Annie Key, married Matthew Ward, who
killed a Kentuckian in a duel, was my wife’s
bridesmaid, and Sylvanus J. Macey, son of William
H. Macey, was groomsman. My wife was
only seventeen years old. She was very beautiful.
Her picture appeared in the Book of Beauty the
following year.

We came east from Louisville on our wedding
journey, stopping at Cincinnati, where I had a
curious experience. The Burnett House was the
most popular hotel in the city at that time, and
we stayed there. It had just fitted up the first
“bridal chamber” in this country, if not in the
world. Every little hotel has one now; but then
such a thing was unheard of, so far as I have been
able to ascertain. At any rate, Mr. Drake, the
clerk, asked me if I did not wish to take the “bridal
chamber.” He told me it was the only one in
the world. As I was ever keen and ready for a
novelty, I replied that of course I would.

I had already been in a great many hotels in[Pg 117]
this country. The prevailing rate of charge was
about $2 a day, at that time. I supposed that this
splendid room would cost a little more, being a
special apartment—perhaps about $5 a day. It
cost $15! But I was willing to pay for the honor
of occupying the first “bridal chamber” in the
world.

From Cincinnati, we came directly on to Boston,
and stayed at the Winthrop House, where I
had been before. I soon had a conference with
the Boston house which I represented, and it was
determined that I should return to Liverpool and
resume charge of the branch there, but in somewhat
different and better circumstances. I returned
in ’52. The ship we sailed on was the
Daniel Webster, built by Donald Mackay in East
Boston, and which I had named in special honor
of my friend, the great Daniel. Captain Howard
was in command.

The trip was destined to be eventful. Five
days after leaving Boston we ran into a heavy
gale from the west. Our boat was very sturdy,
and we had no fears, but I knew that many smaller
and less seaworthy ships would suffer in such a
driving storm. We were, therefore, on the lookout
for vessels in distress.

For the greater part of the time, during the
height of the gale, I stood on the bridge closely
scanning the horizon line in front. Suddenly
something seemed to rise and assume form out[Pg 118]
of the storm-wrack, and this gradually grew into
the shape of a vessel. I saw that it was a wreck,
shouted to the captain, but he, looking in the direction,
could make out nothing. My eyes seemed
to be better than his, although his had been trained
by long practise at sea. He could not see much
better when he got his glasses turned in the direction
I indicated, but finally he discovered the vessel,
though he did not seem desirous of leaving his
present course to offer assistance.

I insisted that we should go to the rescue of
the ship and her crew, and he turned and said:
“Mr. Train, we sea captains are prevented from
going to the rescue of vessels, or from leaving our
course, by the insurance companies. We should
forfeit our policy in the event of being lost or
damaged.”

“Let me decide that,” said I. “We can not
do otherwise than go to the assistance of these
persons.” And we went. The Webster bore
swiftly down upon the wreck, which proved to be
in worse plight than I had imagined. She was
buffeted about by the waves, and seemed in peril
of going down at any moment. Men and women
were clinging to her rigging, hanging over her
sides, and trying to get spars and timbers on which
to entrust themselves to the sea. The doomed
vessel was the Unicorn, from an Irish port, bound
for St. John’s, N. B., with passengers and railway
iron. This iron had been the cause of the wreck,[Pg 119]
for in the rough weather it had broken away from
its fastenings, or “shipped,” as the sailors express
it, and had broken holes in the sides of the boat
and overweighted it on one side.

A brig that had sighted the Unicorn before we
came up had taken off a few of the passengers—as
many as it could accommodate. The Unicorn
was a small vessel, and there seemed little chance
for the rest of the passengers unless we could
reach them. The sea was running very swift and
high, and it was not possible to bring the Webster
close to the side of the Unicorn. To make matters
worse, the sailors had found that there was whisky
in the cargo, and in their desperation, drank it
without restraint. They were, consequently, unmanageable.
They could not help us to assist the
miserable passengers on their own boat.

There was nothing else to be done except to
get into our small boats and try to save as many
passengers as possible. The captain got into one
boat and I into another, and we were rowed to the
side of the Unicorn. There we discovered that
many had already perished. Dead bodies were
floating in the sea about the ship. We tried to get
up close enough to reach the passengers, but found
it impossible.

“Throw the passengers into the sea,” I shouted
to the captain of the Unicorn, “and we will pick
them up. We can’t get up to you.” In this way,
the crew of the Unicorn throwing men and women[Pg 120]
into the sea, and our boats picking them up, we
succeeded in saving two hundred. All the rest—I
do not know how many—were drowned. We finally
got these two hundred persons safely on board
the Daniel Webster.

Here we discovered other difficulties, and it
seemed, for a time, as if starvation might do the
work that had been denied to the waves. There
was, also, the question of accommodations; but we
solved this problem by taking some of our extra
sails and tarpaulin and rigging up a protection for
them on the deck and in the hold, so that we made
them all fairly comfortable. The problem of food
was far more difficult. We simply had no food,
the captain said. There was hardly more than
enough for the crew and passengers of our own
vessel, as the delay caused by the rescue and the
departure from our course had made an extra demand
upon supplies.

Here a happy thought occurred to me. We
happened to be carrying a cargo of corn-meal. I
had heard that the Irish, in one of their famines,
had been fed with corn-meal, learning to eat and
even to like it.

“Open the hatches!” I cried, with the enthusiasm
of the philosopher who cried “Eureka.”
The problem of food was soon solved. Two of the
barrels were cut in half, making four tubs. From
the staves of other barrels we made spoons, and
from the meal we made mush which the half-[Pg 121]starved
men, women, and children ate with great
relish. They lived on it until we got them safely
landed on English soil, the entire two hundred
persons reaching port without the loss of a single
soul.

This was my first service at a rescue, and, of
course, I was proud of it. Captain Howard received
a handsome medal from the Life Saving
Society of England, and the incident greatly increased
the reputation of our packets.

On arriving at Liverpool, we went to No. 153
Duke Street, a house then kept by Mrs. Blodgett,
whose husband saw service as consul in Spain.
This house was at that time the favorite resort of
American sea captains and shipping men, and was
a sort of central point for all Americans in Liverpool.
John Alfred Marsh, who had been with us
in Boston, was with me in Liverpool at this time,
in the branch of our house there; and I think he
is the only man living among all of my friends of
that year. He is now connected with the Guion
Line steamships.

During the first year in Liverpool after my
marriage, I had a peculiar and interesting experience
with the science of phrenology. At that
time every one was talking about its “revelations,”
and I became somewhat interested in it.
My interest came chiefly, however, through James
McHenry, whose line of ships to Philadelphia I
had charge of. He suggested one day that I go[Pg 122]
to a phrenologist, saying that I had a most curious
head. Up to this time, I had not taken any
stock in the science, which I set down as charlatanry
and mountebankism. But he insisted, and
finally I consented to go with him to Bridges, then
the most famous phrenologist in Liverpool or in
the west of England.

Bridges astonished me so greatly by telling me
things about myself that I had supposed no one
knew but I, that my interest was awakened.
Still I thought there must be something queer
about the thing, and I accused McHenry of having
told Bridges something about me beforehand so
that I might be taken by surprise. McHenry so
vehemently denied this that I knew he was telling
me the truth. There was nothing to do but to
accept the “chart” of Bridges as being at least
sincere.

As I like to investigate everything for myself,
I determined to see what there was in phrenology,
and to have my head examined in circumstances
where there could be no question that the phrenologist
had had any information about me. So
I went to London, and there consulted a still
more famous phrenologist, the octogenarian Donovan.
I said to him: “Mr. Donovan, I want you
to tell me the plain truth about my head.” “Phrenology
does not lie,” he said. “Put down your
guinea.”

I put down the guinea, and submitted to an [Pg 123]examination.
He told me almost the same things
that Bridges had said, and thus confirmed the first
chart of my head. After finishing his examination,
Donovan looked at me and said: “You will be
either a great reformer, or a great pirate. It
merely depends upon the direction you take in
Ethics!”

Even this examination did not entirely satisfy
me. There were still higher authorities in phrenology,
and I felt that I should not be satisfied until
I had the verdict of the highest court of appeals.
I consulted every phrenologist I could reach—a
great professor in Paris, another from Germany,
and finally, I reached the highest authority then
living, the highest that has ever lived, possibly,
the great Dr. Fowler, who was then lecturing in
England.

He came to Liverpool to lecture, and I went to
hear him. Fowler asked for some one from the
audience to allow him to examine his head. As he
had never seen me, I felt that I could in this way
get an absolutely impartial and unprejudiced reading.
I went on the stage, and my appearance
caused a ripple of surprise, for I was known in
Liverpool. The phrenologist placed his hands on
my head and exclaimed: “Jehu, what a head!”
The audience applauded, as if they thought I had
a head, and had used it to good purpose in their
city.

Beverley Tucker was American consul in Liv[Pg 124]erpool
at that time, having been appointed by
President Pierce. When the famous actor and
dramatist, John Brougham, visited Liverpool, I
suggested that we Americans, in whose country
Brougham had lived and done his best work,
should entertain him at a dinner at the Waterloo
House. We had a large and lively company present,
and Brougham was in his best vein. I asked
Brougham for his autograph, and, at the same
time, something about the poet Willis, who was
then our favorite American poet. He gave me
instantly, without apparent thought, the following
verse:

Thus have I narrated, in this and the previous
chapters, the most interesting events and experiences
of my life in Liverpool. The life there
was particularly varied and altogether delightful.
It was, of course, a very busy time, but I managed
to get a great deal of pleasure out of it. There
was a constant round of entertainments, and the
social life of the city was generally gay and interesting.
At this period I had two portraits of
my wife and myself made. They are now in the
possession of my daughter, who keeps them in the
room which she always has ready for me in the
country.[Pg 125]

As for my standing in the city, I may give here
the opinion of Charles Mackay, the poet, author
of Cheer, Boys, Cheer, and other well-known
poems, who wrote, in reviewing my book, Young
America in Wall Street, that I “walked up the
Liverpool Exchange like a Baring or a Rothschild.”
I remained in Liverpool one year with my
wife, and then returned to the United States.
This was in ’52. The best men of Liverpool had
made me welcome everywhere, in all circles of
business or of society.[Pg 126]

CHAPTER X

BUSINESS SUCCESS IN AUSTRALIA

1853-1855

My wife and I in returning to Boston came on
a visit that we expected to be brief. I confidently
supposed I should go back to Liverpool and continue
the business of the branch house. But this
was not to be. Instead, I was soon to make a far
wider departure in business fields and methods,
and to try my fortune at another end of the earth.

When I arrived in Boston, I had a conference
with Colonel Train about conditions in England,
and suggested to him that I should have a partnership
interest in the Boston house, as well as in
the house in Liverpool. To my surprise, Colonel
Train was not only astonished, but indignant. He
could not understand how I had pushed ahead so
rapidly, and this swift advance was by no means
pleasant to him. He felt that, in some way, I was
pushing him out of his place.

“Would you ride over me roughshod?” he
asked, almost fiercely, when I ventured to suggest
a larger partnership interest. I replied that I[Pg 127]
thought I had given full value for everything that
the house had done for me, and that I should be
able to do so in the future. After some further
discussion, in which the old gentleman was mollified,
the matter was arranged. I received a partnership
interest that was equal to $15,000 a year—and
I was only twenty-two years old at the time.

As soon as the contract was signed, and it was
in my hand, I said—because I was still nettled by
the manner in which he had received my suggestion
of a partnership—”Colonel, as you do not
seem to care to take me into the firm, here is your
contract”; and I tore it in two and handed him
the pieces. “I am going to Australia.”

This cool announcement astonished him. He
did not know what to do. Finally, we came to
terms. It was decided that I should go to Melbourne
to start my own house with Captain Caldwell,
one of our oldest ship-captains, the house
to be known as “Caldwell, Train & Co.” It was
Colonel Train’s view that this elderly man would
act as a check upon my youthful rashness, he having
no interest in the firm but good-will toward
me and one of his captains.

The arrangements once completed, I was eager
to be about my work in the antipodes, and prepared
to sail at the first opportunity. Everything
was taken from Boston—clerks, sets of books,
business forms, etc. Nothing was left to the
chance of finding or getting in Australia the ma[Pg 128]terial
that we might need. And so the new house
of “Caldwell, Train & Co.” sailed away from Boston
on the Plymouth Rock for Melbourne, Australia,
on a singularly audacious venture.

Captain Caldwell went out in charge of the
clerks, while I was to go by a different route a
little later. I went to New York and took passage
from there in the old Whitlock Havre packet, Bavaria,
Captain Bailey. I had two clerks with me,
and carried, also, a large amount of office supplies
in duplicate. Duncan, Sherman & Co. had appointed
me their agent for the purchase of gold in
Melbourne, which was to be shipped to London or
New York as circumstances permitted, and I had
also been appointed by the Boston underwriters
their agent to represent them in the South Seas.
The outlook for business seemed especially bright.

I have traveled a great deal since that time, but
this was the longest period I have ever been on
a ship in a single voyage. We were ninety-two
days from New York to Melbourne. I have twice
since gone entirely around the world in less time.
It was very dreary at times, and I had to resort
to all manner of things in order to pass the hours.
These attempted diversions were often very
amusing.

I have always wanted to do things a little differently
from others, partly because it has been
more interesting to do them in a novel manner, but
chiefly because I have found that a better way than[Pg 129]
the accepted one could be found. My desire for
novelty led me to do some curious things during
this long and tedious voyage to Melbourne. One
day I was looking at the porpoises playing about
the ship’s bows, and it occurred to me that I could
harpoon one of them. I asked the captain if he
had a harpoon, and he brought me one. I then had
a rope tied fast about me, so that I could be lowered
over the bow. I had a good chance and let
fly the harpoon, and, as luck would have it, succeeded
in getting a fine porpoise. My successful
throw astonished every one—myself more than
any. The porpoise was brought aboard, and we
found portions of it very good eating.

On another day I hooked a shark, a “man-eater,”
ten feet long, and this, also, was brought
aboard, but no one proposed to eat it. A little
later we passed into the zone of the albatrosses,
and myriads of these exquisite birds flew over or
hovered above the ship. I was desirous to have
one of them, and resorted to stratagems learned
years ago in the days when I used to snare rabbits
and net pigeons on the old farm in New England.
I baited a hook with pork, and threw it out
upon the water. Instantly a great albatross
swooped down upon it and swallowed the bait. I
drew the bird on board, and found it a magnificent
specimen, measuring twelve feet from tip to tip
of its wings. Of course, I released the bird very
soon. In such pastimes, we beguiled the time, un[Pg 130]til
we finally swept through the great South Seas
and into Hobson’s Bay, passed Point Nepean, and
anchored off Sandridge.

I had fancied that Melbourne was not a frequented
port, off the tracks of commerce, although
springing into life and prominence. Imagine my
surprise when, on rounding the point where one
could sweep the expanse of the bay, I saw before
me some six hundred vessels that had reached the
port before we arrived, and all, like ourselves, attracted
there by the rumors of gold, gold, gold!
For a second time within a few years, the whole
world had gone wild over a gold discovery, and
was now sending thousands of persons to Australia.
Thousands more were deterred from going
only by the fear of starvation, for very few believed
at that time that Australia could feed the
hungry searchers after gold, much less give them
a fortune in gold nuggets.

Before I left Boston I had heard much about
the perils of starvation in Australia. I was told
that the country produced little, and that its scant
resources would soon be overtaxed by the horde
of gold-seekers. “Starve!” I said; “why there
are twenty million sheep in the island.” I was
then told that man could not live by mutton alone.
But I knew that, with these millions of sheep,
there was little danger of famine.

From the anchorage at Sandridge to Melbourne
the distance is about ten miles, the Yarra-Yarra[Pg 131]
winding and twisting through the tortuous channel.
As this river is too shallow to admit ships
of a greater burden than sixty tons, all large vessels
anchor at Sandridge, or Williamstown. While
the distance up the Yarra-Yarra is ten miles,
across the spit of sand it is only two. I went into
Melbourne at once, secured buildings for our
cargo, and arranged for lighters to take it up the
Yarra-Yarra.

The very first thing that impressed me in Australia
was the miserable and unnecessary inconvenience
of having to send everything up the
twisted channel of the Yarra-Yarra by lighters. I
determined to look into this and see what could be
done. The method was too expensive and too slow
to suit me. I immediately called on the most influential
men of the city, like De Graves, Octavius
Brown, Dalgetty, Cruikshank & Co., and James
Henty, and said to them: “This thing of coming
by way of the Yarra-Yarra, ten miles, when it is
only two miles by land, is out of the question. Let
us build a railway to Sandridge.”

Apparently, this had not occurred to them.
They had brought from England their habits of
thought, and accepted things as they found
them. But I kept at the railway suggestion, until
the line was built. This was my first experience in
organizing railways. It was not my last.

I also found that it was not possible to get suitable
accommodations in Melbourne for business.[Pg 132]
There was no building there that was large
enough. In order to get one sufficiently commodious,
I had to build it. Accordingly, we put up
at the corner of Flinders and Elizabeth Streets,
opposite the railway station, the biggest structure
in the city. It cost a pretty penny. The building
was 140 feet deep, 40 feet wide and three stories
high. The date, “1854,” was cut in stone at the
top. The edifice cost $60,000. I imported iron
shutters from England to make it fireproof.

It was also necessary to have a building at
Sandridge, a warehouse in which to store our
goods until they were needed in Melbourne, or
until they were shipped for America or Europe.
In putting up this building, I resolved to make an
experiment. This was to have the building made
in Boston, and shipped out to me to be erected at
Sandridge, thousands of miles away. If successful,
the warehouse would cost much less and would
be of better material and in better style than anything
I could get in Australia. It reached Sandridge
all right and was put up at the end of
the little line of railway, at a cost of $25,000. It
was 60 feet deep by 40 feet wide, and six stories
high.

With a warehouse at each end of the line, with
all the business credit that I could wish, and with
the best connections in the world, we were prepared
to do a big business in Melbourne. How
far we succeeded may be inferred from the fact[Pg 133]
that my commissions the first year amounted to
$95,000.

Melbourne was a small but promising city. It
had some 20,000 population at the time of the gold-fever,
and had grown tremendously in the last two
or three years, so that, in ’54, it must have had
something like 30,000 or 40,000 inhabitants. It
was, of course, a frontier town, crude and raw,
with few of the advantages of civilization. The
people were too busy with their search for gold
and profits to think much of the conveniences or
luxuries of life. The only good hotel, for instance,
was the Squatters’ Hotel, at Port Philip. There
was not even a merchants’ exchange, although one
was greatly needed. The merchants had simply
never heard of such a thing. I arranged with
Salmi Morse, who afterward tried to introduce
the Passion Play in this country, to assist him in
putting up a building that could be used for a
hotel, theater, and mercantile exchange. The
hotel was the Criterion, and we had a hall in the
building for the exchange. The latter was the
means of bringing together ship captains, merchants,
agents, and business men generally, and a
great stimulus was given to business.

I was able to introduce into Australia a great
many articles and ideas from America. I brought
over from Boston a lot of “Concord” wagons, of
the same type as the one that “Ben” Holliday
drove across the continent, and I told Freeman[Pg 134]
Cobb, who was then with Adams & Co., that I
wanted him to start a line of coaches between
Melbourne and the gold-mines, a distance of about
sixty miles. I advanced the money for the enterprise,
and a line was established, the first in Australia,
to Geelong, Ballarat, Bendigo, and Castle
Maine. These were the first coaches seen in that
continent. The coaches cost in Australia $3,000
apiece.

I had a chaise brought from Boston for my
own use. It was so light in comparison with the
great, heavy, lumbering vehicles that were in use
in all English countries, that the people there said
it would break down immediately. They had not
heard of Holmes’s “Wonderful One-horse Shay
that ran a hundred years to a day,” and did not,
of course, know the toughness of all “Yankee”
things. It didn’t break down, and its lightness
and general serviceableness made it a big advertisement
of American goods. People urged me to
import a great many vehicles from America.
Every ship brought out wagons of the Concord
make, chaises, and vehicles of all sorts. Our carriages
and buggies attracted much attention.
They were the first vehicles of the sort that had
ever been seen in the country. I sold these at a
great profit.

A great disappointment and loss occurred,
however, through the carelessness of the American
shippers, on one occasion. They had sent a[Pg 135]
cargo of carriages, and I was certain of a large
profit on the shipment. What was my surprise
and horror, on the arrival of the cargo, to discover
that the stupid shippers had sent only the tops
of the carriages! The bodies of the vehicles had
actually been shipped to San Francisco!

A thing that greatly surprised me, in a land
of Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, was that
there were no sports in Australia. It seems more
strange now, after Kipling’s fierce denunciation
of the “padded fools at the wickets and the muddied
oafs at the goal.” As I had always been fond
of outdoor sport, I at once introduced bowling and
ten-pins, opened an alley and organized a club
which was composed of Australian bankers—Manager
Blackwood of the Union Bank, MacArthur of
the Bank of Australia, Badcock of the Bank of
New South Wales, Bramhall of the London Chartered
Bank, O’Shaughnessy of the Bank of Australasia,
and Mathieson of the Bank of Victoria. I
mention these names here merely for convenience,
and to bring together some of the men with whom
I was associated in social and in business life in
Melbourne. They represented some $200,000,000
of capital. MacArthur had a beautiful bungalow
four miles out of Melbourne, where he invited me
to shoot.

I found living at a hotel very dreary and very
inconvenient, and decided to have a home of my
own. So I got a two-story house at Collingwood,[Pg 136]
near the residence of Governor Latrobe, just out
of the city. Here I accommodated my clerks, also.
I took the stewardess, Undine, and the steward
from one of our ships, and was able to set up quite
an establishment. The United States consul, J.
M. Tarleton, and his wife, lived with us for a time.

After I had been in Melbourne nearly a year
I was guilty of a small piece of patriotism that
has ever since seemed very amusing to me. I had
been reared in the belief that every American-born
boy has a chance to become President of the United
States. I had also the idea that a child born out
of the United States was not, in this sense, American-born.
My wife expected to give birth to a
child in a few months, and, like most parents, we
fully expected it would be a son. So what should I
do, in order not to rob my son of the chance of
becoming President of his country, but send the
mother across the seas to Boston, that he might
be born on the soil of the United States! It was
not until some little time after this that I learned
that nationality follows the parents, and that
Presidents may be born anywhere, if they are
careful in the matter of their parents. The expected
boy was a girl—if I may be pardoned an
Irish bull. This was my daughter Sue, who could
never be President, unless the Woman’s Suffrage
movement moves along very much faster than it
has up to this time.

I have not mentioned my partner in the Aus[Pg 137]tralian
venture, since I said that he and our clerks
sailed away from Boston for Melbourne on the
Plymouth Rock—a curious reversal of history, for
the West was going to exploit the East, and it was
singular that a vessel with the historic name of
Plymouth Rock should have been chosen to bear
this new Argonautic expedition into the South
Seas. Captain Caldwell, as I have said, was an
elderly man, sober and conservative. He had been
a sea-captain for many years, and was a man of
considerable experience. It was the expectation
of the Boston shippers that his conservatism
would serve as a check upon my rashness and venturesomeness.

Captain Caldwell, however, did not like Australia,
but his presence did not prevent my plunging
into whatever speculation or enterprise seemed
inviting. The country was full of chances, and I
should have been stupid, indeed, not to have
availed myself of them as far as possible. But
the rough life did not suit Captain Caldwell,
although he was accustomed to roughing it at sea;
and he wanted to return to America. So I consented
to his return. He went in the same ship
with my wife, the Red Jacket, which, by the way,
was then to make one of the record-breaking voyages
of the world. Although he had been in Melbourne
only a few months, I gave him $7,500,
which was the share belonging to him of the estimated
profit in our business.[Pg 138]

There was still another incident connected with
this voyage of the Red Jacket which made it memorable
in my experiences. I have mentioned that
the phrenologist Bridges said, in England, some
years before this, that I should become either a
great reformer or a great pirate. In Melbourne,
one day, I found myself face to face with a charge
of piracy! I was accused of trying to make away
with some $2,000,000 of gold, which I had put on
the Red Jacket for shipment to London.

It happened in this way. It was of course customary
to have all bills of lading signed by the
ship’s captain. But Captain Reid, of the Red
Jacket, had been arrested, at the instance of one
of the passengers, and the ship was libeled on account
of a claim. For this reason, Captain Reid
had not been present to sign the bills of lading.
In Boston, I had often signed bills of lading in
the absence of the captain, so I had had no hesitancy
as to my course in this emergency. I considered
that I had a perfect right to sign the bills,
and so I did sign them for the $2,000,000 in
gold, putting it “George Francis Train, for the
captain.”

Now, the English are a conservative people.
When they see anything new it “frights” them.
They can not understand why there should ever
be occasion for any new thing under the sun.
When the Melbourne banks saw that I had signed
the papers, they were scared nearly out of their[Pg 139]
boots. They had never heard of such a procedure,
and thought their insurance was gone.

But this was not all. The Red Jacket was the
fastest clipper that had then visited Melbourne,
and it occurred to these bankers that I was going
to run off with this gold, and become a Captain
Kidd or a buccaneering Morgan. They grounded
their fears upon the facts that my wife was
aboard, that Captain Caldwell, my partner and
friend, was also a passenger, and they believed
that Captain Reid was on board, although under
arrest. To suspicious bankers, here was a really
strong case against me.

In the meanwhile, the Red Jacket, with her
trim sails bellied with the wind, and sweeping
along in a way of her own that nothing in the
South Seas could imitate or approach, was passing
down Hobson’s Bay. The Government and
the Melbourne authorities despatched two men-of-war
after her. There was no possibility of her
being overhauled by these craft, and I gave orders
to make for Point Nepean. The sheriffs from Melbourne,
who thought Captain Reid was aboard,
stayed on the ship, but I ordered them put off at
the Point. They were furious, but could do nothing,
since they could not act for Melbourne at sea
under the Stars and Stripes. Accordingly, they
were put on a tug and taken back to Melbourne.
Immediately after the sheriffs left the boat, a little
yacht, the Flying Eagle, with Captain Reid[Pg 140]
aboard, came alongside, and the captain was put
on the Red Jacket, just outside the jurisdiction of
Australia.

The Red Jacket caught the wind again, and
showed her clean heels to the slow-sailing men-of-war
giving chase. She made the run to Liverpool
in sixty-four days.

The authorities and the bankers of Melbourne
did not like the proceedings at all, but saw that
they could do nothing. There was great anxiety
in Australia for two months and more. When it
was learned that the $2,000,000 of gold had been
landed in Liverpool without the loss of a farthing,
I was heartily congratulated, although the British
spirit never forgave the taking of matters into
my own hands and making the best of a bad situation.
Their conservatism had received a shock.[Pg 141]

CHAPTER XI

THE GOLD-FEVER IN NEW SOUTH WALES AND
TASMANIA

1853-1855

During my stay in Melbourne the gold-fever
was at its height. I was particularly interested
in the mines, and went to Ballarat to see how the
British managed these things. It was while I was
there, as it happened, that the great “bonanza
nugget” was discovered. I shall never forget the
impression that this discovery and its tragic ending
made upon my mind. It is a story that the
world has heard many times, perhaps, and as
many times forgotten; but for one who felt its terrible
lesson stamped hot upon his heart, it is unforgettable.

There were lucky and unlucky miners in Australia,
as there have been everywhere else in the
world’s gold-fields. Many found great nuggets
that contained fortunes—”infinite riches in a little
room”—while many more found nothing but
infinite hardship and heart-breaking misery.
Among the army of broken men, there was a[Pg 142]
“hobo” named Hooligan who had not found
any gold, could no longer find even work, and was
starving. One day he went to the owners of a
mine or shaft that had been worked out, and asked
permission to go down to try his luck. They consented.
The desperate fellow took his pick and
descended to the bottom of the shaft. In a few
minutes he was worth a fortune. He had found
the biggest nugget ever taken out of the earth’s
treasure-house. Two hundred feet below the surface
of the ground, he had driven his pick, by
merest chance, against a lump of gold that would
have transmuted Midas’s wand into better metal.

He came up out of the shaft, knowing that he
had found a pretty big sum, but did not realize
how much it was. The nugget was brought up
and weighed. It had exactly the weight of a barrel
of flour, 196 pounds. He was rich. That morning
he had been a beggar, and now he was the
richest miner in the fields. They weighed the gold
carefully, and told him that he was a rich man.

“Is—all—that—mine?” he asked, as if the
words were as heavy as the big nugget and as valuable.
They told him it was. “It doesn’t belong
to the Government?” “No.” “All mine,” he
said in a whisper, and dropped to the floor, dead.

No one knew him. His name even was not
known. He was a mere restless wanderer upon
the face of the earth, and had broken his heart
over the biggest nugget, the richest piece of gold,[Pg 143]
on the globe. And so the nugget became the property
of the Government, after all.

Capt. David D. Porter, who was afterward admiral
of the United States navy, visited Melbourne
while I was there, and I gave him a reception,
at which he met the prominent people of the
colony. He was a relative of mine. I was very
proud of him then, though more so later. He was
in command of the Golden Age, which was afterward
famous for the Black Warrior incident.
He invited my wife and myself to go with him in
his ship to Sydney, New South Wales. We had a
delightful trip around the island. The ship made
as great a sensation in Sydney as it had made in
Melbourne. The American flag had rarely been
seen above a man-of-war in those waters. At Sydney
we met Sir Charles Fitzroy, Governor of New
South Wales, as well as prominent people in civil
and official life. Sir Charles Fitzroy was a survival
of the old “beau” days of the court of the
last of the Georges, and had the heavy courtesy of
that time, when everything said or done was accompanied
by a low bow and a gracious smile. He
entertained us handsomely at Government House.
We were also entertained by Sir Charles Nicholson,
at his beautiful country seat. I had the peculiar
pleasure, while in Australia, of fulfilling one
of the prophecies of Sidney Smith, made when he
had been editor of the Quarterly Review some forty
years before. He said, I remembered, that in half[Pg 144]
a century cargoes of tea—the luxury that England
of his day and ours regards as an infallible evidence
of civilization—would be landed at the
docks of Sydney. He referred to Port Jackson,
which is now dominated by the thriving city of
Sydney, and was then one of the most promising
ports of the South Seas. I was, at that time, receiving
tea on consignment from Nye, of Canton,
China, called the “Napoleon of tea trade,” and
it occurred to me that Australia should be a
good market for it. Three cargoes came from
Canton, with instructions that if the market at
Melbourne proved unfavorable, one of the cargoes
should be shipped to Sydney. It was accordingly
sent there, fulfilling the prophecy of Sydney
Smith, and opening the tea trade of that portion
of Australia.

Sir Charles Nicholson, before we were there,
entertained Commodore Wilkes, who was visiting
Australia, and who afterward stirred up Great
Britain by removing forcibly from the British
mail-steamer Trent the Confederate States’ agents,
Mason and Slidell. I was surprised to find in the
harbor two of our old packets, the Anglo-American
and the Washington Irving, Captain Caldwell’s
packet, under changed names. They had
been sold to English ship-owners.

Sydney was not a large place at this time, although
it was growing fast. It may be well to
recall here that it had been founded as a penal[Pg 145]
colony, the effects of which had not entirely passed
away at the time of my visit, although no convicts
had arrived since ’41, I believe. The influence of
Botany Bay had also been felt by Sydney. I was
struck by the beautiful, narrow, rock-bound entrance
to the harbor. It gives to the port many
miles of seashore, and is so winding that when
Captain Cook, who discovered it, sailed in and
anchored in Botany Bay, some of his sailors reported
that they saw from the masthead a large
inland lake in the interior. The “lake” proved
to be only an apparent one, produced by one of
the many windings of the beautiful, sinuous arm
of the sea, eventually to hold in its embrace the
fine city of Sydney.

We returned from Sydney to Melbourne after
a short but delightful visit. Shortly after leaving
port we ran into one of the most terrific storms
I have ever experienced. It was the right time
of the year for gales to appear, and this one, as is
characteristic of the wild nature of the South
Seas, seemed to spring from a clear sky and unruffled
waters. If our boat had been one of the
usual type of merchantmen, it must certainly have
gone down. But the Golden Age was stanch and
strong. She battled with the seas as with a
human foe. In spite of her seaworthiness, however,
almost every one aboard thought she could
not withstand the repeated shock of waves that
tumbled in mountains against her bows.[Pg 146]

In the midst of the storm, I saw one of the
most prominent and richest merchants of Sydney
coming across the deck, thrown hither and thither
by the tossings of the ship, and carrying in his
hands a very heavy package. “For the love of
goodness, what have you there?” I asked in
amazement. He made no direct reply, and I
thought him too much terrified to speak, but he
finally came close up to me and said: “Mr. Train,
I know you have some influence here on the ship.
I have brought with me one thousand sovereigns.
They are here”—and he tapped the bag he carried
in his hands. “I want you to go with me to the
captain and give him this amount for putting me
off in a small boat.” “A small boat would not live
a minute in this sea,” I said. “I am prepared,”
he replied, “to take my chances, as it would be
better there than here, for the ship may go down
any moment.” I refused to go to the captain with
so foolish a request, and urged him to be calm, as
the ship was stout and would weather the storm.
He could not calm himself, but fretted and fumed
in terror. As fortune favored us, the gale suddenly
stopped, sweeping on away from us as swiftly
as it had come. The rich merchant soon took
his thousand sovereigns back to his room.

I have stated already that I was the agent for
Boston insurance people. This, of course, made
me somewhat solicitous about the safety of all vessels
in those waters. One morning the entire city[Pg 147]
of Melbourne was startled by the news that a great
clipper had gone down or ashore on Flinder’s Island,
off Point Nepean. Later we learned that she
was ashore, and that signals of distress were flying
from her masthead and rigging. Of course,
I was much alarmed, and began at once to see
what could be done to save the ship and crew. I
got a tug, and was soon taking a rescue party down
Hobson’s Bay. We steamed as fast as the tug’s
engines would carry her through the driving seas.
As we neared the wreck, we saw that the ship was
the Whistler from Boston. She seemed to be a
complete wreck, and with our glasses we could not
discover any sign of life aboard her.

I did not give up the venture there, however,
but directed the captain of the tugboat to make
directly for the island. I had a vague hope that
the crew had somehow managed to get ashore in
the boats or on floating timbers. The captain did
not relish this part of his work, and his fears
were soon justified, for we very narrowly escaped
shipwreck ourselves in the wild seas. We had,
finally, to wait until the waves went down a little,
before attempting to land on Flinder’s Island. We
got up as near as we could, however, and then we
saw signals flying from shore. We signaled in
reply, and the wrecked crew understood that we
were waiting for the sea to run less wildly before
attempting to reach land.

The wind died down slowly, and it was hours[Pg 148]
before we could approach the coast. As soon as
possible, I got out with a crew in a small boat and
went to the island. We had a most difficult time
in getting through the surf and avoiding the breakers,
but we finally reached shore. There we found
Captain Brown with his wife, the ship’s officers
and the crew, all alive and well. They had managed
to live on shell-fish and wallaby—the small
bush kangaroos. They had not been able to take
anything from the ship, and could not, of course,
reach her after she had been abandoned. We got
them all aboard the tug, and carried them safely to
Melbourne. The American consul afterward sent
them all home by way of Liverpool. This was the
second rescue of shipwrecked crew and passengers
that I had made, and I felt a little too proud of it,
I suppose.

About this time the British and Colonial Governments
decided to settle Tasmania with free emigrants.
The idea was to pay the expenses of all
who wanted to go to that island, and the Governments
made a contract with the White Star Line
to transport the settlers. The British Government
was to pay one half the expense, and the Colonial
Government the remainder. The contract was
signed by Henry T. Wilson, manager of the White
Star Line, the sailing-ship pioneers of Morgan’s
mammoth steamship combination, who sent all
the papers to me at Melbourne, as representing
the company, to see that the terms of the agree[Pg 149]ment
were carried out. He also requested me to
go to Hobart Town (now called Hobart) to be
there when the first ship-load of emigrants arrived
to collect the money for the passage. I immediately
took steamer for Hobart Town, and
I shall never forget the pleasure of that voyage.
It was a revelation. The trip up the estuary to
Hobart Town was delightful, and the scenery,
I think, was altogether the most charming
I had seen in the Southern world. At Hobart
Town I was received by Mr. Chapman, a shipping
merchant, to whom I had written in advance, and
he made me stay with him at his beautiful bungalow,
on the crest of a high hill, commanding a fine
view of the city.

The emigrants arrived in excellent condition.
They were the first free settlers of Tasmania.
There had not been a death aboard ship, and the
moment the newcomers arrived they were employed,
for the city of Hobart Town was very
thriving, and there was an abundance of work to
be done. I again had the pleasure of feeling that
in this, as in other enterprises, I was an argonaut
and a pioneer.

I was astonished to find so many persons of
prominence, especially in the world of letters, settled
in this far-away colony of England. At Hobart
Town I found the Powers, the Howitts
(whose books were then tremendously popular),
and Thorne, the author of Orion. Then, as now,[Pg 150]
this colony was regarded as the most pleasant portion
of the vast possessions of Great Britain in the
South Seas. The climate and the aspects of the
country were far more pleasant than those of Australia,
some fifty miles distant across Bass Straits.

At the time of my visit the whole world was
talking about the various efforts being made to discover
the remains of the ill-fated expedition to the
North Pole that had been led by the former governor
of Tasmania, the much-beloved Sir John
Franklin. He had gone to the north in 1845, and
nothing had been heard of him since. His wife
was supposed to be mourning for him in solitude.

Curiosity led me to the house where this famous
governor and adventurous explorer had
lived, and the janitor, a trusted old servant,
showed me over the building. It was one of those
enormous structures which the English build for
the edification and amazement of the natives in
their colonies. I had heard and read a great deal
about Sir John and the lovely woman that was
mourning his long absence, and I entered the silent
house with a feeling that I was trespassing upon
a great and unutterable grief. Imagine my astonishment—I
may say, horror—to learn that Lady
Franklin, or Lady Jane, as she was generally
called, had for years lived at one end of the long
house, while Sir John had lived at the other, and
that, as the story went, they had not spoken to
each other for years. She seemed certainly to[Pg 151]
have had the grace to assume a virtue she did not
possess, and apparently mourned her lost lord for
years, and spent much of her time in liberal charities.
This is the first time I have referred in any
way to this unknown unhappiness of Sir John
Franklin. It was not known to many people in
Tasmania at the time, and I suppose that it is
known now only to members of the two families,
the Franklins and the Griffins.

As I had come half around the island of Tasmania,
approaching Hobart Town from the sea,
I had seen nothing of the interior of the country,
so I determined—after finishing my business in
Hobart Town—to cross the island to Launceston.
There is now a railway running directly across,
but at that time there was only a stage route.
Stages ran every other day. I engaged passage
in the mail-coach, the same style of coach that had
been used for hundreds of years in England and
Scotland, still as rough and cumbersome as when
first devised. There, too, was the old Tudor
driver and the Restoration guard. Nothing was
wanting. The coach looked to me as if it had been
taken from behind the scenes of some old comedy—a
piece of stage property.

But if the stage was antiquated and out of
touch with the modern stir of the world, the driver
was not. I asked him what he thought would be
the proper thing in the way of a “tip,” as I did
not know the ways of Tasmania. “That depends,[Pg 152]
sir,” he said, “upon whom we are riding with.”
That settled the business for me, for my tip then
had to be a sort of measure of my self-esteem. I
was literally cornered, and had to give him a big
tip, in sheer self-defense.

The road to Launceston was an excellent one,
a macadam built by convicts, and the scenery was
the most beautiful I had seen in Australasia.
When I arrived at Launceston I had to get a pass
to leave the country, as it had been necessary to
have a passport to enter it. The British were very
particular whom they permitted to leave Tasmania,
and whom they allowed to go there.

Near Launceston I saw the room in which
Francis, who was afterward a member of the
cabinet of the colony of Victoria and one of
the ablest and most energetic men of Australasia,
had his famous and terrible fight with a burglar.
This fight has become a tradition all over the colonies
and is still recalled as one of the thrilling
experiences of early days. One night Francis
heard a noise in his dining-room. He was up late,
studying in his library, and as the country was
infested by desperate convicts who had escaped
from the camps, he at once went to the room to
see whether a burglar had broken in.

Peering through the keyhole, he saw a man
with a dark lantern putting the family plate into
a bag. Francis came to a decision at once as to
what to do. He would enter the room, and fight[Pg 153]
it out with the robber. Silently opening the door,
he entered, and then quickly locked the door and
threw away the key. Immediately there was a
desperate fight. The burglar finding himself entrapped,
turned upon Francis and tried to kill him
with a huge knife. Francis caught his arm, and
a struggle to the death began. Several times the
burglar wrenched his hand free and slashed at
Francis, but the plucky fellow did not flinch. He
fought until he had conquered the robber, threw
him to the floor, and bound his hands behind him.
Francis was himself so badly cut that he was in
sight of death for weeks.

The exploits of the convict Tracy out in Oregon
remind me of a far more terrible case in Australia
that occurred while I was there. The country
was a sort of frontier, in the Western sense,
from one end to the other. It was quite possible
that a desperate convict lurked in every patch of
bush, who would as soon kill you as ask for bread.
But news came to Melbourne one day that a convict
had escaped in a peculiarly terrifying manner.
He was no ordinary man. He had coolly
killed two jailers, or guards, having taken from
them their own weapons. Then, going to the
water, he ordered a boatman to row him out to a
vessel so that he might escape from the country.
The boatman, not knowing the character of the
man he was dealing with, refused, and was shot
dead instantly. The fugitive then rowed out to[Pg 154]
the vessel in the dead man’s boat, and demanded
of the captain that he take him aboard and carry
him to Melbourne. The captain refused, and he
also was shot dead, and with loaded pistol the convict
then compelled the mate to take him to Melbourne.
After he landed he began a forlorn attempt
to save himself from his pursuers.

This beginning in his career of murder was
sufficiently terrible to give the entire region a
shock, when it became known that he was at large
and headed for Melbourne. He was next heard
of when he reached Hobson’s Bay at Sandridge.
Here he found a farmer plowing in the field. The
convict needed his horse, and shooting the farmer,
rode away. Another farmer followed him, and in
turn was killed.

By this time, of course, the whole country was
aroused—even the police—and parties were hurriedly
formed to capture the murderers, for no
one at the time could believe that it was only one
man who was committing all these crimes. When
he was last seen, he was heading, apparently, for
Ballarat, where, perhaps, he hoped to be joined by
other men as desperate as himself. Ballarat was
about one hundred miles distant, and a posse started
in pursuit. Nothing was heard or seen of the
convict for fifty miles, when one of the party saw
a man near a squatter’s hut carrying another man
in his arms. This seemed to be a somewhat curious
proceeding, and the posse immediately closed[Pg 155]
in about the man. Just as did Tracy, this man
shot the leader of the party. The others then
pushed ahead and captured him before he could
kill any one else. In the hut they found nine men,
tied with ropes. It was not understood what use
the convict expected to make of them. All were
uninjured. At the time of his capture, the convict
had killed fourteen men.[Pg 156]

CHAPTER XII

OTHER AUSTRALIAN INCIDENTS—A REVOLUTION

Once I tried to be President of the United
States. Before that I had been offered the presidency
of the Australian Republic. It is true that
there was no Australian Republic at that exact
moment, but it looked to thousands that there
might be one very soon. There was a revolution,
or, as it should be called, a rebellion, for it was
unsuccessful, in which I had taken no part or
shown any sympathy, but the revolutionists, or
rebels, offered me the chieftaincy of their government,
as soon as they could establish it.

It came about in this way. In ’54 the miners
in the fields of Ballarat and Bendigo were in a
state of intense ferment. They were discontented
with existing conditions—their luck in the mines,
the way they were treated by the Government and
the mine proprietors, and especially by the utter
failure of the Government to protect them in their
rights against the capitalists. The particular
cause of quarrel, however, was the licenses.[Pg 157]

When I went to Australia, the reader may
easily believe, there was very little feeling for, or
knowledge of, the United States. I at once undertook
to spread the gospel of Americanism, and
introduced the celebration of the Fourth of July.
The colonists of England have always been quite
friendly to the people of the United States, having
a kindred feeling, and all of them have been
looking forward to a day when they, too, might
have a free country to claim for their own, and not
merely a red spot on the map of Great Britain.
For this reason, the Australians took kindly to the
idea of celebrating the independence of the United
States, as formerly a colony of Great Britain.

When the miners, who had heard of my
“spread-eagleism,” as it has since been called,
started their little revolt against the government
of the British, they thought of me and offered me
the presidency of the republic they wanted to
create. In the meantime, they elected me their
representative in the colonial legislature of the
miners about Maryborough, where they held a
great meeting. I could not have taken my seat if
I had desired it, and as I did not desire it, of
course I declined. The imaginary presidency I
declined, also, as I neither wanted it, nor could I
have obtained it. The “Five-Star Republic,” as
it was called, was not to be anything but a dream,
and the “revolution” of Ballarat was only a
nightmare.[Pg 158]

Soon after I declined these honors, there was
a terrible riot at Ballarat. The whole mining
district had risen against the Government, as Latrobe,
the governor, had made himself most unpopular
by his policy of procrastination. Everything
connected with the mining fields, he seemed
to think, could as well be looked after next year
as this. The resentment of the miners had at last
become uncontrollable. But, slow as they were
about redressing the grievances of the miners,
the British were fast enough in the business of
protecting themselves and in putting down disturbances
with a firm and heavy hand. Latrobe
waited until the thing had almost got beyond him.
He felt that he was all right with the old “squatters,”
whom he understood and who understood
him; but he did not realize that the new element,
the thousands of miners that had floated in from
every nation of the globe, did not understand him
or his ways. They were accustomed to having
matters attended to with despatch, and could not
tolerate the slow conservatism and unchangeableness
of the English civil office. Personally he was
a good man; but otherwise, he was as I have described.

The first fruits of the dilatory policy was the
sacrifice of forty men. Captain Wise and forty
of his troops were cut to pieces by the enraged
miners, who had suddenly risen to fight for their
rights. Governor Latrobe immediately called for[Pg 159]
troops from New Zealand, Tasmania, and New
South Wales, to quell the rioters. The want of
preparation of the revolters at once became apparent,
and it was known that they had sent emissaries
into Melbourne itself to buy arms and ammunition.
The head of the insurrection was James
McGill, who was an American citizen. He had disappeared
from the neighborhood of Ballarat, and a
reward of one thousand pounds sterling had been
offered for his capture, dead or alive. In Melbourne
there was almost a panic. Rumors were
that the forests were filled with armed men marching
to the destruction of the place. There were, it
was authentically reported, 800 armed men at
Warren Heap, about eighty miles distant, who
were supposed to be meditating a raid. People
hastened to secrete their jewelry, gold was placed
in vaults, the banks were guarded, and a special
police force was sworn in.

Just as the excitement was at its height, it was
reported that James McGill was in the neighborhood
of the city. I was sitting in my office one
morning, during these days of fear, when a man
walked in, as cool as if he were merely going to
discuss the weather or some trifle of business. “I
hear,” he said, “that you have some $80,000 worth
of Colt’s revolvers in stock, and I have been sent
down here to get them.” I glanced up at the man,
and took him in a little more closely. It came to
me in a flash who he was. “Do you know,” said[Pg 160]
I, “that there is a reward offered for your head
of one thousand pounds?” “That does not mean
anything,” he said, and smiled as if it were a joke.
“They can not do anything,” he added, as if to
allay any fears that I might have.

I again took him in, and thought of my $60,000
warehouse that we were then standing in, of the
$25,000 warehouse at the other end of the railway,
and of all my interests in Melbourne, under which
we were placing a powder mine, and playing over
it with lighted torches. “This will not do,” I said.
“You have no right to compromise me in this
way.” “We have elected you president of our
republic,” he added. “Damn the republic!” said
I. “Do you mean to tell me that you refuse to
be our chief?” said he. “I do,” I said. “I am
not here to lead or encourage revolutions, but to
carry on my business. I have nothing whatever to
do with governments or politics; and you must
get out of here, if you do not want to be hanged
yourself, and ruin me.” I told him there was not
the slightest possibility of success, as Great Britain
would crush the revolt by sheer weight of men,
if she could not beat its leaders in any other way.

Just then there came a rap at the door, which
I had taken the precaution to close and lock. I
hurried to the door and asked who was there, and
the reply was that it was Captain McMahon, chief
of police. He said to me: “Do you know that
rascal McGill is in the city? His men are at War[Pg 161]ren
Heap, but he himself has actually come into
Melbourne! I want a dozen of those Concord wagons
of yours immediately.” I made a motion of
my hand to make McGill understand that he must
keep quiet. Then I began to talk rapidly with the
chief of police, and took him to the farther end of
the warehouse, shutting the door of my office behind
us. No more wagons were there, for
the Government had already got all I had, but I
wanted time to think. When we had looked
around, and had seen that there were no wagons,
Captain McMahon left, and I hurried back to
McGill.

“Now, McGill,” I said, “I am not going to betray
you, but am going to save your life. You
must do as I tell you.” He looked at me for a
moment, and said, “But I am not going back on
my comrades.” “You will have no comrades soon,
but will be in the hands of the officers yourself, if
you do not do exactly as I tell you.” He finally
consented to do as I advised.

As soon as I saw that the way was clear, I took
him out into the street to the nearest barber, where
I had his hair cut and his mustache shaved off, and
then made him put on a workman’s suit of clothes.
We then got into my chaise, and I drove him down
to the bay and took him aboard one of our ships
that was about to sail, and told the men that I had
brought a new stevedore. McGill pitched in and
worked along with the men, and there was nothing[Pg 162]
to show that he was in any way connected with
the revolution of Ballarat, much less its leader.

Three days later the ship sailed, and McGill
went on through England to America. This ended
the whole affair of the revolution, the chase of the
leader, and my chance of being President of the
Five-Star Republic!

One day a man, wearing a jaunty silk hat, came
into my office. “I see you bring in rum from New
England,” said he. “How much have you on
hand?” I went over the invoices, and told him.
He then asked if I gave the same terms as other
dealers in Melbourne. “Yes,” said I; “cash.”
“Oh, no,” said he. “I get three months’ time.”
He showed me a contract he had just signed with
Denniston Brothers & Co., of New York, represented
in Melbourne by McCullagh & Sellars, for
£3,000 payable in three months. I was astonished.
The house had branches in all of the great cities
of the world. I told the gentlemanly-looking fellow
who wanted the rum that if Denniston could
afford to trust him for $15,000, I thought we could
trust him for $3,000. I took pains to see, however,
that our paper bore an earlier date than that of
Denniston. But this precaution amounted to nothing
against this shrewd manipulator. He gave his
name as John Boyd.

By the end of the week, I began to grow a little
suspicious, and sent my clerk to the office of Mr.
Boyd early on Monday morning. The office was[Pg 163]
closed, and there was no Mr. Boyd there. He had
gone to Sydney, and that was the last seen of
Boyd in Australia. He had “buncoed” us and
Denniston & Co. in the easiest sort of way. I
really felt cheated, it was done so smoothly. I
had not got the worth of my money, as I should
have done had I been harder to deceive. There
had been no sport in that.

I next heard of Boyd at Singapore; but I was
to run up against him later. In ’61, when I was
giving a junketing trip to some people on the
Union Pacific road, and a party of us were on the
steamboat St. Joseph going to Omaha, a man came
up to me and claimed an acquaintance. Although
more than twelve years had passed, I recognized
him at once as the John Boyd who had got the better
of me in that little trade in Melbourne. I pretended
not to know him. I suppose he assumed
that the matter had passed out of my mind and
that his face was no longer familiar to me. He
coolly gave me his address on a card, and when I
looked at it I saw “Noble & Co., Bankers, Des
Moines, Iowa.” I knew him by his broken nose,
that would have betrayed him at the ends of the
earth.

Perhaps the thing I enjoyed most in Australia
was the introduction of American articles—”Yankee
notions,” the people there called them—into
Australia, even against the prejudice of the colonists.
They would fight hard against everything[Pg 164]
that was new or American, but I took a delight in
overcoming their bias, and forcing them to accept
our ideas. I made a calculation once of the things
that I had introduced into Australia, and they
amounted to something like fifty. Among these
were such common things as the light wagon, the
buggy, shovels, and hoes, and—wonderful to think
of when one hears and reads so much in these days
of the “tins” that the British army consumes—tinned,
or canned, goods. These had not been
heard of, and I saw at once that there was a fine
chance for some profitable business. English
packers could not begin to compete with us. On
one cargo that I brought in from New London,
Conn., we made a profit of 200 per cent. And now
“Tommy Atkins” lives on the “tins” that we introduced
as a method of carrying provisions from
one end of the world to the other.

I suppose that it was from a part of the returns
from this profitable shipment that the owners of
the goods founded the Soldiers’ Home at Noroton,
Conn., during the civil war. I must record
here a curious incident. It was in this home that
a soldier carved a most elaborate design upon a
cane which he gave to me, showing in brief outline
the whole of my history. It was a wonderful
piece of work, and I have kept it as a souvenir of
the regard of this soldier in the home that was
probably founded in part with the proceeds of the
first great shipment of canned goods into Austra[Pg 165]lia,
and of my part in introducing this new trade
into the South Seas.

I had the opportunity of meeting some famous
and curious people in Australia. On one of the
celebrations of the 17th of March, I met a great
many Irish patriots, among them Smith O’Brien,
John Martin, and Donohue. I was an invited
guest, and sat down with more than two hundred
of the most prominent Irishmen of the Australasian
colonies. When Smith O’Brien was in an
Irish jail in ’48, I asked him for his autograph. I
have made it a point to collect the autographs of
all the famous men and women I have met, and
now have, perhaps, the finest collection of autographs
to be seen in this country. O’Brien immediately
wrote on a card the following verse:

This sentiment of the Irish poet was peculiarly
appropriate for men, who, like the patriots and
“rebels” about me, were facing prison or death
at every hour.

I shall bring together here some incidents of
my life in Australia that are not closely connected
with other events there. We made some tremendous
profits in Melbourne, the sort that makes
one’s blood tingle, and transforms cool men into
wild speculators. I have already mentioned the[Pg 166]
profit of 200 per cent on the cargo of canned
goods. On a cargo of flour from Boston, 7,000
barrels, we made a profit of 200 per cent, the flour
selling for £4 sterling the barrel. This flour had
been shipped to us through John M. Forbes, of
Boston, for Philo Shelton and Moses Taylor, the
millionaire of New York.

When I returned to New York in ’57, during
the panic, I met Taylor in Wall Street. He must
have been in terrible need of money to keep his
head above water, and he at once said to me:
“Why did you charge me 7 ½ per cent commission
for handling that cargo of flour in Melbourne?”
I looked at him in astonishment. He had forgotten
the enormous profit he had made on the shipment,
and remembered now only the small matter
of the commission he had been compelled to pay.

I replied that the commission was our usual
charge. He told me he was buying up his own
paper in the street, and was not in temporary distress.
“I do not think you should have charged
me more than 5 per cent commission,” he said. I
was disgusted at this view of a transaction that
had brought him in a profit that would have been
considered marvelous even by a usurer. “All
right,” I said, “I will give you the difference
now.” And I gave him a check for $2,500.

I met a large number of actors and actresses
in Melbourne, for it was quite the custom as early
as that for stars of the stage, whether tragedians[Pg 167]
like Edwin Booth, or dancers like Lola Montez, to
make a tour of the world and take in Australia on
the circuit. I was astonished to meet Booth and
Laura Keene, “stranded,” one day, although they
had made a successful tour in England. They did
not appeal to the rough audiences of Australia,
and so did not have enough money to take them
back to the States. It so happened that I had
just bought the City of Norfolk to send to San
Francisco as the pioneer of a new line, which is
now thoroughly established, and making rapid passages
between the two ports. I gave them free
passage to San Francisco. Laura Keene frequently
mentioned the fact in “asides” on the stage,
but I never received a word of thanks or appreciation
from Booth. Kate Hayes and Bushnell also
visited Australia while I was there, and I gave
them a concert and started them off on their tour.

But the greatest sensation that was created in
the theatrical world of Australia during my stay
was made by Lola Montez, the dancer from Madrid.
She danced and pirouetted on the necks
and hearts of men. The rough mining element
went wild over her, and she had the wealth and
rank of Melbourne at her feet. One morning she
burst into my office, and called out in her quaint
accent, “Is Mr. George Francis Train here? Tell
him that I am his old friend from Boston, and
that I have just arrived from San Francisco.” She
had called to make a complaint against the captain[Pg 168]
of our ship, whom she wanted us to discharge for
some supposed discourtesy to her. We patched
up this quarrel, and I did everything I could to
insure her a successful season in Melbourne. She
had a tremendous vogue, and danced before
crowded houses.

One night I called at the green-room of the
theater to see her, sending in my card. I had
seated myself on the sofa to wait until she finished
her dancing. Suddenly the door flew open, and
in rushed something that looked like a great ball
of feathers. This ball flew toward me and I was
enveloped in a cloud of lace! The bold little
dancer had thrown her foot over my head!

My life in Australia, now drawing to a close,
as I had made arrangements for leaving there to
continue my business operations in Japan, had
been very charming and profitable. Everything
was novel and strange to me, and it all made a
deep and lasting impression upon my mind, which
was then eagerly receptive.

I find, in recalling these impressions, that my
first idea of Australia still remains the most prominent
one left in my memory. Australia was truly
the antipodes. Everything seemed to be reversed,
a topsy-turvy land. At Botany Bay I was astonished
to find the swans were black, thereby demolishing
our beautiful ideas about “milk-white”
swans. The birds talked, screamed, or brayed, instead
of singing, and the trees shed their bark in[Pg 169]stead
of their leaves. The big end of the pears
was at the stem, and cherry-stones grew on the
outside of the fruit. I was sitting one day in the
garden of the governor-general when I thought I
felt some one tap me on the shoulder. Then my
coat was wrenched off my back, and I turned just
in time to see it disappear down the throat of a
tame Australian ostrich, called an emu. The bird
had taken me for a vegetable.

Sidney Smith describes the kangaroo as an animal
with the head of a rabbit, the body of a deer, a
tail like a bed-post, and which, when in danger, puts
its young into a pocket in its stomach. But the
most marvelous of all the queer things of Australia,
to my mind, was the animal that laid eggs like
a hen, suckled its young like a goat, and was web-footed,
like a duck. This was the duckbill, or water-mole,
which the Australians called the Patybus.

I also saw in Tasmania, and on Flinder’s Island,
the race of men that was then considered the
most remarkable on the globe, the original Tasmanian
savages; and I saw, also, the most curious
weapon that man has ever invented, the boomerang.
Holmes has described this weapon in one of
his humorous verses:

I got one of the Bushmen to throw his boomerang
for me. He threw it around a tree and the missile
came back toward us. I fully expected to be sent[Pg 170]
sprawling. It dropped almost at the feet of the
savage that threw it. Even gold in that land is
found where it all ends in our country—in
pockets!

Before closing the account of my Australian
experiences, I want to record that when I arrived
in Melbourne that flourishing port was in a horrible
condition for a city of its size and importance.
Its streets were such as would not have
been tolerated in an American city of half its size
or one tenth its wealth. There were practically
no public works. After I had been there for some
little time, a plan was put on foot to improve the
city. It moved along very slowly, as no one
seemed to know exactly what to do, or how to do
it. Finally, an elaborate program was drawn up,
and all that was needed to carry it out was the
money, which would have to be borrowed.

The chairman of the improvement committee,
or whatever it was called, came to see me to get
me to undertake the floating of the necessary loan.
I suggested a number of improvements, such as
fire-engines, better office buildings, better paved
streets, and new gas-works. All of these suggestions
were accepted, and I forecast the floating
of the loan. They got the money in London, and
Melbourne was remodeled, so far as its appearance
was concerned, and was finally made one of
the most attractive cities in the British colonies.
It now has a population of half a million.[Pg 171]

CHAPTER XIII

A VOYAGE TO CHINA

1855

I have already referred to my purpose of
going to Japan to establish a branch business
there. This idea came to me in Australia, after
Commodore Perry had opened the country to foreigners.
It has always been my desire to be first
on the ground, and I saw that Japan offered the
greatest possible opportunities for trade of all
sorts. I had fixed upon Yokohama as the place
in which to open our branch house. The rapid
development of that city since then, under new
conditions, and the tremendous increase of its
trade with Europe and America, as well as with
India, China, and Australasia, have well justified
my early judgment. I knew we could acquire great
influence in the world of commerce, and become,
perhaps, the greatest shipping house of the globe,
with branch houses at Boston, Liverpool, Melbourne,
and Yokohama.

This is as good a place as any to give the reasons
for the failure of these ambitious plans. I[Pg 172]
had gradually worked out the whole program, giving
to it hours and days of careful and painstaking
examination. I felt that the scheme was absolutely
safe from every point of view. It was big
and almost grandiose; but I felt it was sure to result
in vast fortunes, in the building up of a trade
that the world had never before conceived or
dreamed of, and in the development of American
commerce.

In fact, I see now that I was more than half
a century ahead of J. Pierpont Morgan. I should
have formed a great shipping and navigation
business that would have dwarfed anything else
of the kind in the world. My plan was not limited
to a few lines of ships between Europe and
New York. It was not confined to an Atlantic
ferry. I foresaw, as I fancied, American ships
dominating the trade of all oceans. I saw the
American merchant flag in every port of the Pacific,
Indian, and Atlantic oceans, and doing the
carrying trade of the world. I had some such
vague idea when I introduced the fast clipper
service between Boston, New York, and San Francisco,
and, again, when I organized the fast sailing-ship
service between Boston and Australia. But
I did not see it all clear before me, as I saw it in
Australia. The Orient had cleared my eyes.

Of course, my first thought was for the up-building
of our house. I wanted it to take the
leading part in the stupendous task, and to become[Pg 173]
the first house of the world. All this could have
been accomplished, except that I had to contend
against the conservatism of New England, and the
very easily understood desire of Colonel Train
that his house should directly own all its ships.
This was, of course, impossible. He could not
own them, but he might control them. I urged
upon him the policy of retaining a controlling interest
only, and letting others come in, bringing
the capital we should need for the greater enterprise.
This was my idea of “combination,” of a
great “shipping combine,” more than half a century
before it was undertaken, in another way, by
Mr. Morgan and his associates.

Colonel Train’s persistent demand that he
should own all the ships, put an end to the plan.
It not only put an end to a grand project, but put
an end to his business. He was soon confronted
with difficulties. The business had outgrown him
and his limited means, had become unwieldy and
unmanageable. As I had foreseen, it needed more
men, more minds, more money; and these were
not forthcoming. And so, in ’57, Colonel Train
was forced down, literally crushed beneath the
weight of his own undertakings, as Tarpeia was
crushed beneath the Sabine shields. He was the
victim of his desire to own and dominate everything.

Two years before this collapse of a great idea,
I left Australia for Japan, by way of Java, Sin[Pg 174]gapore,
and China, with high hopes. I had visions,
which were to accompany me for a year or two
more, and then I had to abandon them and turn
my attention to other fields. From Melbourne, I
sailed on the Dashing Wave. Has it ever occurred
to any one who writes or thinks of the old days
of sailing vessels, those winged ships, that the very
names of boats have changed, indicating the transformation
from romance to reality, from poetry to
mere prose and work-a-day business? In those
days we had beautiful and suggestive names for
ships, just as we ought to try to find beautiful and
suggestive names for all truly beautiful and lovable
things. Now we send out our City of Paris,
or St. Louis, or St. Paul, or the Minneapolis, or
the Astoria, or Kentucky, or Blaamanden, or Rotterdam,
or Ryndam, or Noordam. Then we had
such names as Flying Cloud, the clipper that shortened
the distance between the ends of the world;
the Sovereign of the Seas, the Monarch of the
Ocean, the Flying Arrow, the Sea Eagle. The
Dashing Wave, Captain Fiske, carried me to Batavia
in twenty-six days. We were accompanied,
for a portion of the trip, by the Flying Arrow.

At Anjer, in the Straits of Sunda, the Malays
came off to the ship in their little boats with provisions
of all sorts to sell. Every one of them
had letters of recommendation, as they thought,
from the English captains and officers who had
previously traded with them; but these letters, if[Pg 175]
they could have been translated for their possessors,
would have been instantly cast into the sea
and a general riot perhaps would have followed.
One of the letters read something like this: “If
this black thief brings any eggs to sell to you,
don’t buy them, as they are always rotten. He
may also try to sell you a rooster, but don’t buy it,
as it is the same cock that crew when Peter denied
Jesus.” Of course everybody on the ship roared
with laughter as each letter was handed up to us
and read aloud for the edification of all. The simple
Malays guffawed loudly in their boats, thinking
that we were heartily pleased with them and
their wares. When next I passed through the
Sunda Straits, Krakatoa had been at work in eruption
and had completely changed the face of the
coast, and Anjer itself and the little island it stood
on were gone.

This Dutch colony was a revelation to me in
every way. I had never seen anything at all like
it in any other part of the world, and was never
again to see anything quite so quaint or so delightful.
The ride from Batavia to the hotel was full
of surprises. I was accompanied by a troop of
little children, all of them pressing close up to us
and crying for “doits”—small copper coins. I
scattered these little coins among them again and
again, but they could never get enough, but kept
on crying, “doit, doit!” Then the color of the
trees, the rich shades of the flowers that flourished[Pg 176]
everywhere, the beauty of the scenery—all was a
delightful surprise. I have never seen elsewhere
so many or such rare flowers. The whole island
of Java, as I was soon to learn, is a vast botanical
garden, far more beautiful and rare than any that
science can create. Nature, the great horticulturist,
has here done her best and final work. The
air, too, was delicious. It was perfumed by flowers,
aromatic herbs, and spices. I had never realized
before what was meant by the legends of the
“Spice Islands,” and I fancied that here was the
place for man to live and die.

I drove to the residence of the governor-general
at Buitenzorg, thirty-five miles south of Batavia,
which was situated in a tremendous garden
of flowers and trees. It was the most beautiful
place I had ever seen, and I am quite sure that I
have never seen anything more beautiful since. I
was so delighted with Java, indeed, that I had a
model of a Javanese village made for me, and
shipped it home to my wife with the greatest care.
What was my surprise, when I finally reached
home, and asked eagerly if the model had been
received, to be told that nothing had been seen of
it. “Didn’t something come from me from
Java?” Oh, yes, something had come, but it
looked so big and uninteresting that it had been
put down in the cellar. And there my beautiful
model of the Javanese village had lain, in ignominy,
for years! I restored it to its proper posi[Pg 177]tion
in the world, by sending it to the Boston
Museum. It was lost in the fire that soon afterward
destroyed that building.

It was in Java that I first learned to love
flowers, and I have loved them more and more
every year of my life since. The natives of that
wonderful island love to strew flowers over everything,
and to garland everything with beautiful
blossoms. I soon became infatuated with the custom
of carrying flowers, and adopted the boutonnière,
which I afterward introduced in Paris in
’56, in London in ’57, and in New York in ’58.
I have endeavored to wear a spray of flowers in
the lapel of my coat every day since my visit to
Java.

There was one particularly pleasing custom,
which I think should have been long ago introduced
in this country. This was the fashion of bringing
in fruit to the table covered with flowers. It is a
custom that delights three senses at once—the
smell, the sight, the taste. The first time I saw it
was at the table of Mr. Whitelaw Reid, when he
gave a dinner to me and my friends. After we
had finished eating, I was asked if I did not wish
for some of the fruit. I looked around and could
not see fruit anywhere. In front of me were great
masses of flowers in baskets, and I could readily
detect the odor of fruits of various kinds, but they
were invisible. I had almost decided that they
were outside in the garden, and that possibly[Pg 178]
we were expected to pluck them from the trees,
which, heavily laden with their burdens, hung
temptingly against the windows. But no, the fruit
was immediately before me, hidden beneath masses
of cut flowers, in trays and baskets. I thought it a
beautiful custom, and one that distinctly appeals
to esthetic taste. It could well be introduced at
Newport or Saratoga, or in Fifth Avenue mansions.

I regretted that Great Britain had lost, through
a piece of carelessness, these magnificent islands
now controlled by Holland; although the Dutch
have done about as well as any other people could
have done, I suppose. I believe it was because
Lord Canning did not open his eastern mail one
morning, that these islands became a possession
of Holland instead of Great Britain.

I did not, on the occasion of my first visit, see
anything of the Achinese. But I passed, in ’92,
on my last trip around the world, the northwestern
end of Sumatra, and Captain Hogg, of the Moyune,
pointed to the little town of Achin, built on
piles. He said that in the interior the Dutch were
still fighting the Achinese. They had then been
fighting these desperate Mohammedans—converted
Malays—for thirty years. I have since thought,
having in view this prolonged struggle for freedom
of the Mohammedan Malays of Sumatra, how
desperate is our undertaking in the Philippines,
where we are trying to subjugate a far larger[Pg 179]
population of Mohammedans, the Moros of
the southern islands of the archipelago. Holland,
I believe, has spent already something
like 500,000,000 florins to exterminate the Achinese.
It may cost us far more to exterminate the
Moros.

I left Batavia for Singapore on a Dutch man-of-war,
Captain Fabius. We stopped first at the
island of Banka, belonging to Holland, and I saw
there the famous tin-mines, which are greater than
those of Cornwall, England. They were the property
of the brother of the King of Holland. We
did not stop at Sarawak, because of the little war
that “Rajah” Brooke, afterward known as Sarawak
Brooke, was carrying on there. We arrived
at Singapore just too late to meet Townsend
Harris, the first American diplomatic representative
to Japan, as he had gone up to Siam.
Harris’s visit to Japan was the real beginning
of a new era in the trade of the far East, and
no other diplomatic mission in the history of
this country has been fraught with greater results.

Singapore was then a port of much dirtiness
and much business. All the vessels of the world
came there, and the greatest variety of cargoes
that I have ever seen. The most interesting thing
I saw there was the magnificent home of a great
Chinese millionaire, who managed the largest
business in Singapore, or, indeed, in that part of[Pg 180]
the world. He had a splendid palace, surrounded
by beautiful and extensive gardens, the whole being
worthy of a king or emperor. Here he lived
in the style of some barbaric prince. This Chinaman
had established in Singapore the kind of store
which we in America think we invented—the department
store. But I learned afterward when I
went to China, that the department store is common
there, and had been known for hundreds, perhaps
thousands, of years. This development of
the store is as old as the civilization of the Caucasian
race, and, perhaps, was known to China
ages before America was discovered. I had the
pleasure of receiving an invitation to visit the
Chinaman in his palace, and was astounded by the
extensive grandeur of everything. He had a passion
for animals, and owned two tigers in cages
that were the largest animals of their kind I have
ever seen.

From Singapore, I sailed for China on a P. &
O. steamer. On board I met Dr. Parker, the new
American minister to China, and my roommate
was Alexander Collie, of Manchester, England,
who, during our civil war, became the chief English
blockade runner. I may as well dispose of
my experiences with Collie while I have him before
me. Collie operated his blockade-running
business through the London and Westminster
(Limited) Bank. When I was in England I discovered
the nature of his work, and exposed him[Pg 181]
through correspondence in the New York Herald.
This led to the breaking down of his enterprise,
and to the bank’s loss of £500,000 sterling. Collie
escaped arrest by fleeing to Spain. I have never
heard of him since.[Pg 182]

CHAPTER XIV

IN CHINESE CITIES

1855-1856

At Hongkong I went to our correspondents,
Williams, Anthon & Co., and took passage in Endicott’s
little steamer, the Spark, for Macao, the
Portuguese port of China. Before leaving Hongkong,
however, as I had some little time on my
hands, I determined to see everything that was to
be seen there. I had the remarkable experience
of meeting the man who was afterward the husband
of Hetty Green. This was E. H. Green, who
was married twelve years later. He was then connected
with the house of Russell & Sturgis, our
correspondents in Manila, and he joined me for
the trip to Macao and Canton. After a short
stay in Hongkong, we went on to Macao and
Canton.

We had, on this voyage, the common experiences
of Chinese waters—pirates and typhoons.
At the Boca Tigris, the mouth of the Canton, or
Pearl, river, we were overtaken by the typhoon,
and we had to anchor near an island in the midst[Pg 183]
of a number of junks. These soon proved to be
pirate ships, and we were, apparently, in great
danger. The pirates immediately began to draw
up about us, as if meditating an attack. The little
Spark would, of course, stand no chance in such a
contest. I did not think she could last ten minutes
in a fight with those ugly junks.

The Chinese anchored their boats up close to
the Spark, and I noticed that a dozen of the ugliest
ruffians our own sailors had ever encountered
were staring in through the cabin windows. I
could not imagine what they were looking at, and
went forward to see what was wrong. There was
Mr. Green, sitting facing the window, his feet on
the table, and making faces at the crew. He was
the coolest man, I think, that I ever saw. Nothing
moved him out of his imperturbable calm.
The Chinamen were scowling at him, but this did
not at all disconcert him. If he was going to be
killed by these devils, he seemed to be thinking,
he might as well die in a cheerful humor. How
could he know they were not pirates in disguise?

The pirates expected that we should fall an
easy prey into their hands, as our coal had given
out, and there was no assistance within reach. We
were in a dilemma, but we attacked the woodwork
of the deck, and got enough to fire up the engines
and get a head of steam, when suddenly, to the
amazement of the pirates, we steamed out and
away. The storm having subsided, the junks[Pg 184]
were soon left far behind and we reached Macao
safely.

Macao was at that time the headquarters of
the new slave trade. I went to the top of a high
hill for the purpose of looking at the barracoons,
where slaves were kept. The barracoon is, in
meaning, a little barrack, but it is, in reality, a
pest-hole. Here were gathered the Chinese who
were to be sent as victims and slaves to the Peruvian
islands. The practise was to bring Chinamen
from the interior by telling them of the great
riches their countrymen had found in America,
which was then a name that tempted all Chinamen
of the coast regions. Many Chinamen, it was
known, had gone to America and done well, and
the wretches that the slave-dealers wanted to ship
to Peru were told that they would be sent to America.
They thought they were going to California;
but they were shipped to the Chincha islands, near
Callao, the port of Lima, Peru.

As Boston was then deeply interested in the
subject of slavery in the Southern States, I wrote
a description of this new slavery in the Chincha
islands, giving the names of the boats that had
recently sailed from Macao with full cargoes of
slaves. I had heard of this horrible traffic in human
flesh at Singapore, but could not believe it,
until I actually saw it at Macao. Whenever the
wretches mutinied, or grew restive, they were put
down in the hold and the hatches closed. The hor[Pg 185]rors
of such a position were as great as those of
the infamous “Middle Passage,” made so conspicuous
by the abolitionists in the campaign
against African slavery. Chinamen perished by
hundreds, and many of the survivors were
maimed or invalided for life. In a single case,
some two hundred victims were smothered and
died in the hold of one of these slavers. My letters
to the New York Herald were copied far
and near. It was discovered that some of the Boston
people themselves were interested in enslaving
the Chinese. But the practise could not stand
the light of exposure, and so was broken up.

We hurried on from Macao to Canton, arriving
there during the Chinese New Year. This city
astonished me in a number of ways. It was dirty
and miserable beyond imagination, with narrow
streets and indescribable filth. But that it carried
on a tremendous volume of trade was apparent
from a glance. The river was covered with junks
and larger vessels at Whampoa, the lower port,
floating the flags of every nation. Warehouses,
the “godowns” of the foreign traders, revealed
the existence of an enormous, and profitable
commerce. The word “godown,” which many
take to be a “pidgin-English” word composed of
“go” and “down,” and signifying putting things
down in a warehouse, is a Malay word, and comes
from “gadang,” meaning a place for storing articles
away. The warehouses were surrounded by[Pg 186]
high walls, in the manner of private villas and
town residences of the Chinese, and were adorned
by beautiful gardens.

There was a pretty custom, among foreign residents,
to invite all visitors to dine with them.
These invitations were sent informally upon little
cards called “chits.” As I was already known
in the business world there, I received a great
many of these invitations. I was walking with Mr.
Green one day, when he said it was getting time
to think about dinner. “Where will you dine?”
he asked. I replied that I did not know which invitation
to accept. I thought that I would take
some of his conceit out of him, by showing him
that I had received a great number of “chits,” and
I drew a package of them from my pocket. I remarked
coolly that I could not make up my mind
what to do, as I had an embarras de richesses. I
counted the “chits,” and there were eleven. Green,
with great nonchalance, drew out his package of
“chits”; he had thirteen!

He had a great way of taking care of himself
in such circumstances. He suggested that there
was only one thing to do—to find out who, among
our intending hosts, would have the best dinner.
He then took me around to the rear of the residences,
where a high wall separated the gardens
from the native city, and where I discovered that
the Chinese cooks always hung up the game, poultry,
and other things they were preparing for[Pg 187]
meals. From this array we could tell what everybody
was going to have for dinner. After a stroll
through the alley, we selected the house that had
displayed behind it some lovely pheasants and
salmon. “The owner of that house shall have the
honor of being our host,” said Green. I approved
his choice both then and after the dinner, which
was an excellent one, at which the golden pheasants
were the pièce de résistance. I soon discovered
for myself, what I had long heard, that the
Chinese are the best cooks in the world.

Another thing I learned about the Chinaman
was that he is the most honest tradesman in the
world, and the most careful about debts. The
Chinese New Year is the season when the Chinaman
wipes off the slate and begins life over again,
with a clean record. He pays up all debts, and
starts even with the world. I learned that on this
anniversary the Chinaman will sell everything he
possesses, even his liberty, his person, his life itself,
to settle his debts, so that he may face the
new year with a clean conscience and a pure heart,
as well as with no bills hanging over him.

As this was practically the first Chinese city
I had seen, I was very curious about it. It was
all new ground to me, and I was eager to explore
it. I knew that this was not permitted, for six
Englishmen had been killed shortly before my arrival,
for daring to venture inside the walls of the
Chinese city, which was then as much forbidden[Pg 188]
ground as the “Pink City” of Pekin. The fate of
the Englishmen only made me more keen to get
inside the walls. I thought I could take care of
myself sufficiently well. I was warned by friends
not to risk the thing, but I took all the responsibility,
and went inside, while the gates were
open. I had not gone more than a few rods when
I heard behind me and all around me the wildest
cries. Men ran toward me with shouts of “Fankwai”—foreign
devil; and I saw at once that I
had stirred up a hornet’s nest. I looked about
me, and discovered that the gate I had come
through was still open. There was a pretty fair
chance, by running fast, for getting through it before
the Chinamen could head me off. This calculation
took about one-millionth of a second, and I
plunged for the gate, “like a pawing horse let go.”
If the stop-watch could have been held on me, I am
sure I should have established a record for a
short-distance sprint.

The next time I visited Canton was in ’70.
The gates were open, and the walls were of no
avail to keep the foreign devils out. The American
merchant Nye, who was familiarly known as
the Napoleon of China, because of his gigantic enterprises,
took me over the city. I had read and
heard about Chinamen eating rats, but this was
the only time I ever saw the thing done, and I
could hardly believe my eyes. A Chinaman came
up to Mr. Nye and me in the street, and offered[Pg 189]
to sell us a rat, a big fellow still alive. I asked
if it was to be eaten, and the Chinaman said it
was. “But it is not cooked,” I objected. “I am
not going to begin on live rats.” The Chinaman
said he would prepare it—the rat cooked and
served to cost me two cents. I told him to go
ahead. To my surprise he took a little stove from
under his arm, lighted a fire, and in a few minutes
had the rodent roasted to a crisp. I was astonished—and
ashamed—to see how nice it looked.
It did appear toothsome. I said to the Chinaman,
“Now, you can eat it.” He did, and with great
gusto and smacking of the lips. So he got his rat
and my two cents, also.

But I ascertained that there is about as much
truth in the common stories in our silly juvenile
literature about Chinamen generally eating rats
as there is in stories of other marvelous things in
far-off lands. I also found that there is no deadly
upas-tree in Java, which was a distinct shock to
me. I had been reared, so to speak, in the fatal
shade of that upas. I had watched birds drop
dead as they tried to fly across its swath of malignant
shadow; I had seen animals stricken by its
fatal exudations and writhing in agony. I saw all
these things in the old New England farmhouse,
which was the headquarters of the Methodists;
but in Java, they had all disappeared. There
was no upas-tree, and the mortality among birds
and animals was no greater than necessary to sat[Pg 190]isfy
the predatory natures of other animals, birds,
and men. And now to find in China that the New
England stories about general rat-eating were
false, was another shock.

But the Chinese are not as cleanly as they
might be. I learned this interesting fact in connection
with my taste for Canton ginger. I had
always, from earliest childhood, been outrageously
fond of this delicate comfit. I had eaten it in
great quantities whenever I got the chance; and
when I arrived in Canton, the home of this conserve,
I at once thought of it, and wanted to know
more about its manufacture. I learned, after
some inquiry, that it was put up at a factory on
the island of Ho-nan, near Canton. Ho-nan is also
the name of a famous Buddhist temple on the
same island. The factory, as well as most of the
so-called island, is built on piles. I had not altogether
overlooked this fact when I asked the
factory people where they got the water for the
sirup of the preserves. They looked at me as if
I were demented. “Water! why we are right over
the river!” Yes, they were right over the river,
the dirtiest and most villainous river in the world.
The sewage of the dirtiest city in China—which is
saying about all that can be said on the subject—is
emptied into this river. I need not say that I
did not eat any of the Canton ginger then, and I
have not eaten any of it since.

I have set down my views as to the topsy-tur[Pg 191]viness
of things in Australia. I found China topsy-turvy
in a different way. The Chinese begin
their books and letters where we end ours, at what
we should call the back. They read from right to
left, instead of from left to right, and, strangest
of all, the men wear gowns, and the women—don’t!
When I was introduced to How-kwa, a warm
friend of the Russells, I advanced to shake hands
with him, but he stepped back and solemnly shook
hands with himself for me. Then he waved his
hands toward the door, as if to say, so it seemed
to me, “get out of here,” and I was amazed, but
Sturgis informed me that the great Chinaman
was merely beckoning to me to come nearer to him.
I went up to him, by that time so impressed with
the Chinese way of doing things backward that if
he had kicked at me, I should have thought he was
asking me to embrace him. We were in How-kwa’s
residence, which was surrounded by the most exquisite
gardens, and were invited to partake of a
cup of tea. For the first time in my life I drank
tea that cost $30 a pound. We used no sugar nor
milk, of course, as these things are considered in
China to spoil good tea. The next best tea I have
drunk, I think, was the tea I got at the fair of
Nijnii Novgorod, Russia, in ’57, which had been
brought overland thousands of miles across mountains
and deserts, packed in little bricks.

Again, I found that the Chinese look backward,
and not forward, and ennoble their ancestors,[Pg 192]
instead of their offspring, and pay little attention
to the coming generation. They say that
they know what their ancestors—the dead—were,
but can not foretell what the living may become.
They scull their boats in the rivers from the bow,
instead of from the stern. Their boatmen are
usually women. While we fear the water, and
seek to make our dwelling places upon the rock or
upon very dry land, the Chinaman will get as near
as possible to the water. In the Canton, or Pearl,
river there were, when I was there, some 100,000
persons living on the river, in boats, or on floats,
or rafts. A Westerner would suppose children
were in danger of falling into the water. They
do fall in, but their mothers have devised a method
of rescuing them without mischance. Cords are
fastened to their bodies, and when a child falls
overboard, the cord, which is made fast to the boat,
prevents it from sinking too far before the mother
or father catches hold and pulls it back into the
boat.

They call all servants, male and female,
“boy,” which reminds me that in the Europeanized
parts of some of the Japanese cities they do
the same, and when they want to specify definitely
that the “boy” is a girl, they say “onna no boy,”
which means “girl-boy,” or girl servant. This is,
of course, pidgin-English, the business English of
the Chinese littoral. I had an amusing experience
with this pidgin-English. I had invited some[Pg 193]
friends to dine with me, a merchant and his two
sons and three daughters, and when I asked the
servant who had come, he said that the merchant
had arrived and “two bull chilo, and three cow
chilo.”

Pidgin-English amused me very much, as it
amuses every one who visits China. Augustine
Heard, the merchant, who was a master of this
lingo, used to interest me by reciting phrases
from it, and once gave me the following poem,
which is a translation of Longfellow’s Excelsior.
The translation was made by Mr. Heard. It has
been published throughout the world as an
“anonymous” production:

When I was ready to start for Japan, I had
made up my mind to visit Shanghai on the way,
and was about to start, when Canton merchants,
native and foreign, tried to dissuade me. They
told me it would be terribly disappointing, and
that I would regret wasting any time there. They
did not know my nature, and that this sort of
thing merely stimulated my curiosity and hardened
my determination.

I took passage in the P. & O. boat, the Erin,
Captain Jameson, and supposed, of course, that I
should have a state-room. But I was to meet with
another Chinese surprise. A great Chinese mandarin,
going from Hongkong to Shanghai, had en[Pg 195]gaged
the whole cabin. I was very desirous to see
this great personage, and soon had the opportunity.
It is my practise, when at sea, to take exercise
by walking rapidly up and down the deck,
thus covering many miles a day. I was taking my
daily exercise the day when the mandarin came on
board ship, and every time I passed the cabin I noticed
that he followed me with his eyes. And so
we kept it up for some time, I walking as unconcernedly
as I could, and the great mandarin watching
my movements as curiously as if I were some
strange animal.

After a while he called the first officer, and
asked what I was doing. “Walking up and down
the deck,” he was told. “But why does he do it?
Is he paid for it?” The officer told him it was
for exercise. “What is that?” asked the Chinese
great man. This was explained to him, but he
could not understand why any one wanted to walk
up and down, and do so much unnecessary work.
The Chinese are not averse to work; indeed, they
are one of the most industrious people on the face
of the earth, but they do not do unnecessary work,
having, I infer, to do as much necessary work as is
good for them. And this great dignitary pointed
to me with scorn and said: “Number one foolo.”
I hardly need explain that “number one,” throughout
the far East, means the superlative degree.

This mandarin was the great Li Hung Chang,
who had been summoned by his emperor to save[Pg 196]
the country from the terrible Tai-ping rebellion.
He was on his way from Canton to Shanghai. He
there called in the splendid services of three great
foreigners—the Frenchman, Bougevine, the American,
Ward, and the Englishman, “Chinese” Gordon;
but it was largely and chiefly due to the stubbornness
and genius of Li that the empire was
saved to the Manchus, at a cost, it is estimated, of
twenty millions of lives.

When we reached Woosung there were six
armed opium ships for cargoes of opium from
Calcutta and Bombay, which the English were
forcing upon the Chinese, much as we should force
rum on the Mexicans, and make them pay for it.
The English and Americans were reaping fortunes
in the most unholy traffic the world has seen—and
it will never be forgotten in China, or anywhere
else, that England went to war with China to force
China to permit the shipment of opium into that
country to ruin millions of lives and impoverish
millions of families. I feel heartily ashamed of
myself for having once smuggled a little of this
horrible drug into China. But I found that many
Americans and Englishmen were devoting themselves
to the trade as a regular business.

In Shanghai I was the guest of Russell & Co.,
who were then represented by Cunningham and G.
Griswold Gray. The fighting in the great rebellion
was still raging—it was not put down until
after Gordon recaptured Nanking—and when I[Pg 197]
was in Shanghai the Chinese authorities kept the
gory heads of rebels hanging from the walls as
an example to all who contemplated opposing the
Manchu rule. These hideous trophies of the war
were the most impressive things that I saw in
Shanghai.

Dr. Lockhart, the missionary, acted voluntarily
as my dragoman and guide in Shanghai, and
showed me things in the city that I could never
have discovered for myself. In one of the squares
I noticed a monument 150 feet high, which, I was
told by Lockhart, had been built by the poor people
of China in commemoration of an old lady,
who had been the Helen Gould of her day. Each
of the subscribers had contributed cash equal to
one tenth of a cent.

Some really splendid virtues of the Chinese
impressed me deeply. I liked and admired them
the more I saw them. I have already said that
they are the most honest people on the globe. It
seems to me an extraordinary thing that this race,
the world’s highest type of honesty, should be the
only race to which we are inhospitable. The Chinese
were far ahead of Europeans in many ways for
centuries. If they have fallen behind now, it may
be only because Europeans are rushing hastily
through their brief civilizations, while China, having
enjoyed hers for ages, is content to watch us
rise, flourish, and decay, as we watch the passing
generations of the forest and the field.[Pg 198]

They invented and used the things that we regard
as almost the highest products of our civilization.
They had used the mariner’s compass for
centuries before we had it; they invented printing
perhaps a thousand years before Gutenberg; they
invented gunpowder, which they had used in war
and every-day life; they had the best paper ever
seen long before the rest of the world had any,
and the outside nations have not yet been able to
duplicate theirs; they invented the newspaper, and
have the oldest journal in the world, the Pekin
Gazette; they discovered the Golden Rule, unless
that honor belongs to the Greek, Thales; they developed
philosophy—the highest system of the
world, in Confucianism—before the Greeks, and,
of course, long before the Germans; and they were
the first people of the world to appreciate education.

Moreover, as Mr. Wu, the great Chinese minister
at Washington, has so often pointed out, they
were democratic long before Thomas Jefferson,
and long before the Greeks had invented the word
“democracy,” or had discovered the idea of a
democratic state or city. I had been taught that
the hard-headed and practical Scotch had invented
the macadam road, naming it from a canny Scot
of that name; but I found a macadamized road in
China three or four thousand years old, and long
enough to wrap around the British Isles. The
Chinese have long preceded us, and they may long[Pg 199]
survive us, nullifying all the “imperialism” and
“expansionism” of Europe and America, which
would cut her into fragments as the spoil of the
world.

While I was in China, on this first visit, and
on the several occasions of my later visits, I gave
much thought to the vast population of that country.
I have come to the conclusion that the population
is less than half, probably less than one-third,
of what it is generally estimated to be. I
notice that the Chinese viceroys have recently
made an estimate of their respective provinces,
at the command of the emperor, and that the total
reaches the enormous figure of 425,000,000. I do
not believe that there are 200,000,000 people in
the entire empire, and I should prefer estimating
the population at something between 150,000,000
and 175,000,000.

I found that China is not a densely populated
country, as is generally supposed. The seashore
is fairly crowded, and the impression one gets
from seeing the surface of the water covered at
Canton with rafts and floats on which more than
100,000 persons live, is that the inhabitants must
swarm in the same degree over the face of the
land. This is not the case. Even the coast is
merely fringed with people. Back in the interior
there are no such dense masses of population. All
accounts that I can read of the interior, from
Father Huc down to Mr. Parsons of New York,[Pg 200]
bear me out in this. I can not see where there are
more than 175,000,000, or 150,000,000, people in
that empire. The reports of the slaughter in the
Tai-ping rebellion, of some 20,000,000 people,
would seem to indicate a population of at least
200,000,000 or 250,000,000; but these figures were
greatly exaggerated, as all such things are in
China. All statistics are nothing but guesswork,
and the bigger they are the better people like them.

I engaged passage in the Greta, which was to
go to Shimoda and Hakodate, Japan. My objective
point was Yokohama, where it was my purpose
to establish a branch of the house of Train
& Co., Melbourne. My Australian house was not
connected with Colonel Train’s Boston and Liverpool
packet firm. At this time, however, the English
and Russians, who were not as good friends
then as they are now, were fighting, and the little
war completely upset all of my plans. I could
not get to Yokohama at all, and did not visit Japan
until several years later. I had, therefore, to give
up my passage in the Greta, and turn my face from
Japan. Just at this point, Augustine Heard invited
G. Griswold Gray, of Russell & Co., and me
to go to Fu-chow, on one of his sailing ships, the
John Wade.

George Francis Train dictating his autobiography in his room in
the Mills Hotel.

This trip I very willingly made, as I wanted
to see everything of China that was possible; but
it was more adventurous than I had expected. As
we were sailing down the China coast, a typhoon
[Pg 201]struck us, and over went sails and masts. Our
pilot from Shanghai was immediately in difficulties,
as the pilot from Fu-chow, whom we had just
picked up, did not understand the pilot we had
brought from Shanghai. I had the utmost difficulty,
owing to my inadequate mastery of pidgin-English,
in establishing communication between
these essential elements of our little crew. We
had, finally, to get into a boat and make our way
up the River Min for forty miles in the dark. It
was a very trying experience, as the river was absolutely
unknown to me; the darkness was “unpierceable
by power of any star,” and the river
was treacherous in itself for small boats. To
make matters worse, it was infested by junk
pirates. This latter danger I had got somewhat
accustomed to, as almost every inch of
Chinese water was, in those days, the field of
operations for these pirates. The other nations
of the world had not yet adopted effective means
for getting rid of them as the United States got
rid of the Algerian and Tripolitan plunderers.

We arrived at Fu-chow, after a harassing
night on the river. Almost the first thing to greet
my curious eyes, as they were sweeping the horizon
for wonders in that land of wonders, was the
old suspension bridge, which the Chinese assert
was built in the fourteenth century. It proved to
be as much of a curiosity as the Chinese wall in the
north. At Fu-chow I was a guest in the house of[Pg 202]
the Russells. Immediately upon landing, Gray,
Heard, and myself took sedan chairs for a tour
through the city.

On this occasion I had my first opportunity to
appeal to the American flag for protection. As
we were passing through a very narrow, but important
street, our coolies were suddenly set upon
and overturned. We scrambled out of the chairs,
and asked what was the matter. We learned that
the viceroy was also passing through the thoroughfare,
and that everything and everybody had to
give way for his retinue. My companions at once
stepped out of the way, but my blood was up. I
resented being upset in the street, like so much
refuse, in order to have the filthy thoroughfare
cleared for the passage of a mere Chinese viceroy.

I had a small American flag in my pocket, carefully
wrapped about its little staff, and I took it
out with a great deal of display and waved the
tiny emblem around my head. I dared the
Chinese servants of the viceroy to touch me or to
interfere with my right to pass through the streets
of Fu-chow. This had its effect. I noticed at once
that the Chinese in the street, who recognized the
colors of the United States, fell back from me,
our coolies got up out of the dirt, and once more
took hold of the poles of the chairs. The viceroy
passed on, pretending not to have noticed the incident,
and in a few minutes the way was clear
again.[Pg 203]

Fu-chow was the black-tea port of China at
that time, and it had been opened just two years
before. It was astonishing at what a rapid pace
business of a certain kind swung along in the
coast cities of the Far East. In two years several
of the Canton houses, representatives of the
great shipping and other business concerns of the
world, had opened branch offices in Fu-chow.
Commercial life there was intensely active and
very prosperous.

From Fu-chow I went on down the coast to
Hongkong, this being my second visit there. I
noticed at Swatow several ships loaded with Chinese
slaves destined for the Chincha guano islands
of Peru. My destination was Calcutta, so we did
not have much time to explore the Chinese coast,
much as I should have liked to do so.[Pg 204]

CHAPTER XV

TO INDIA AND THE HOLY LAND

1856

I sailed from Hongkong on Jardine’s opium
steamer, Fiery Cross. As the course we took had
been gone over by me in the voyage to Hongkong
from Singapore, I was not especially interested in
it until we had passed the Straits and got into
Indian waters. The Andaman Islands, where
dwells one of the lowest races of mankind, interested
me greatly. We saw only a little of these
curious people, the Veddahs, but I learned of a
very interesting custom followed by the widows of
the islands to commemorate their deceased husbands.
This consists in wearing the skull of the
dead man on the shoulder as a sort of ornament
and memento. It is considered a delicate way of
perpetuating the memory of the husband.

I had a letter of introduction from Robert
Sturgis to George Ashburner, at Calcutta, and the
moment I arrived Mr. Ashburner insisted upon
my becoming his guest. I spent three days with
him, and have never partaken of such luxurious[Pg 205]
hospitality elsewhere. It is only man in the Orient
who knows how to live fast and furious and
get every enjoyment out of his little span of life.
I was surrounded by a retinue of servants, who
stood ready to answer every beck and call. Service
in India being highly specialized, there was a
servant for everything. I had a little army of
fourteen serving men, four of whom carried my
chair, or palanquin, with a relay, a man to serve
me specially at table, a punka man, and a man for
every other detail of living.

There was something to do and to see every
moment of the time. I was taken to all the
show-places of the city. The first sight shown to
me was the famous Black Hole, where John Z.
Holwell and one hundred and forty-six men were
incarcerated in a dungeon twelve feet square. One
can not escape being told the horrible story, if he
visits Calcutta, and I suppose that every one hears
the narrative with added adornment, after the
true Hindu style. The special point of the story
that was thrust at me was the orgy and heavy
sleep of the rajah, while his servitors were trying
to arouse him to answer the screams of the
dying men in the Hole. In the morning, after
the rajah had had his beauty sleep, he was told
of the little difficulty the English had in breathing
in the foul and heavy air of the dungeon,
and he ordered them released; but death, lingering,
and as heavy-handed and heavy-hearted as[Pg 206]
the brutal prince, had already released most of
them.

One is glad to be told for the ten thousandth
time, after hearing this ghastly tale, of the clerk
Clive leaving his ledgers and pens and leading an
army to crush the wretches at Plassy. But, like
most things of the kind, the horrors of the Black
Hole have been exaggerated, until sympathy,
palled, refuses longer to be torn and bled over imaginary
as well as real terrors. There have been
many worse catastrophes, and of a nature that
should appeal more strongly to the heart. Men,
women, and children have gone down in flood and
pestilence, free from any stain of wrong, which can
not be said of the victims of the Black Hole. We
can not forget altogether that they were in India
not of right, but as conquerors, and that they were
originally, at least, in the wrong. But the sufferers
in the Johnstown flood, the thousands who
died in the Lisbon, Krakatoa, and Martinique disasters,
and other thousands that go down in ships
at sea—these innocent victims demand sympathy
much more.

It seemed that most of my sight-seeing in Calcutta
was to be limited to horrible things. Indeed,
the visitor is often hurried from horror to
horror, as if he were in some “chamber of horrors”
in a museum. I was taken to the burning
ghaut, where dead bodies are cremated. I saw
some five hundred little fires, which were so many[Pg 207]
pyres for the dead. I had heard much of the
burning of live women in order that they should
accompany their dead masters, and out of sheer
curiosity asked the guard if there were men only
in the fires. For answer, he took a long hook,
thrust it into one of the fires, pulled it back and
on its prongs brought the charred leg of a man.
Immediately birds of prey (adjutants) pounced
down upon the smoking flesh and bore it away.
These birds are the scavengers of Calcutta, and
the special guardians of the ghaut. Cremation is
a great economy in India. It costs only half a cent
to burn a body.

Another horror shall complete this gruesome
part of my story. Being very fond of shrimps,
one day I inquired, in a moment of forgetfulness—for
it is a safe rule not to ask the source of
anything in the East—where and how they got
these shrimps. I was taken to the fishing
grounds in the mouth of the river, and there saw
millions of these prawns flocking, like petty scavengers,
about the dead bodies that continually float
down the Ganges. Human flesh was their favorite
food. This was enough for me. I stopped
eating shrimps in India, as I had stopped eating
Canton ginger preserves in China.

On the second day of my stay in Calcutta I received
cards to the reception given by Lord Dalhousie
to Lord Canning, the new Governor-General.
Lord Dalhousie, the retiring Governor-[Pg 208]General,
was dying. In fact he had been dying
for months. I shall not go into any description
of the exceedingly brilliant reception. It made
an ineffaceable impression upon me because of
the grouping on that occasion of some of the most
splendid of the British administrators and of some
of the most daring of their enemies, who were
even then plotting revolution and bloodshed. I
was introduced to both the passing and the coming
Governor-General and to General Havelock, afterwards
the gallant fighter at Lucknow. I had the
rare privilege of seeing these three men talking
amicably with the great Nana Sahib, the leader of
the Hindus at Cawnpore.

The voyage from Calcutta to Suez was almost
devoid of incident. We put into Madras, a
barren, flat, and dismal place, to take on passengers,
and then sailed for Point de Galle, Ceylon.
At this place I saw, for the first time, elephants
employed in carrying and piling heavy timbers.
They go about their task with an intelligence that
is nearly human, lifting heavy teak timbers and
placing them in regular order in great piles. I
had not before supposed that any animals possessed
so much sense.

Coming down to Aden, two thousand miles
from Galle, sleeping with the bulkhead open opposite
my berth, one night I felt something slap
me in the face. As I was all alone, I did not know
what to make of it. There was no light, and I could[Pg 209]
not see. As soon as I fell asleep another slap came.
I had heard about the insects of the tropics, but
had no idea they were of such size as to cause
these slaps. In the morning, I found out what
had been the matter. Nine flying-fish lay dead in
my berth.

At Aden, the most barren and gloomy place I
have ever seen, we went out to the cantonments,
which must have been built thousands of years
ago. We hurried up the Red Sea to Suez, and
then crossed over by land from Suez, eighty-four
miles, to Cairo, with six hundred camels in the
caravan. We had coaches carrying six passengers.
I have a good idea of what the Sahara
Desert is from having seen this desert between
Suez and Cairo. Just before we reached Cairo,
there was a cry from one of the coaches for us to
look up at the sky. There were masts, minarets,
and the whole city, in fact, painted on the sky. It
was my first sight of the mirage I had heard so
much about. We were then half-way from Suez
to Cairo.

I put up at Shepheard’s Hotel, and immediately
arranged to go out to the pyramids, ten
miles from Cairo. Fifty donkey boys rivaled one
another to get my custom. My donkey started off,
and the first thing I knew he was rolling over me
in the sand. He had stepped in a gopher-hole, and
down he went. Travelers now go out in trolley-cars,
eat ice-cream and drink champagne under the[Pg 210]
shade of the pyramids, and a splendid hotel stands
alongside the Sphinx.

In going up the pyramids it took three Arabs,
two to push and one to pull, to get me to the top.
When we got half-way up, an Arab wanted more
bakshish. I talked to him pretty loud in something
he didn’t understand, and he consented to
take me farther. The top of the pyramid of
Ghizeh has been taken away, and the pyramid is
now about fifteen feet square at the summit. I
made up my mind, the moment I saw the pyramids,
that these gigantic blocks were not stone,
but had been produced by one of the lost arts in
preparing concrete. It occurred to me, as the
pyramids were hollow to the base, that they had
been storehouses for grain, and were not built as
tombs for the Rameses and Ptolemies. Humane
kings had built them, I thought, in order to employ
labor in time of dearth.

As all travelers are told, it was said that a man
would go down one pyramid and come up on
another in so many minutes. I had seen such a
number of “fakes” in my travels that, as I could
not tell one Chinaman from another, how should I
be able to tell one Arab from another? When this
trick was done for me I thought it did not follow
that the man on the other pyramid was the man
who had been with me.

I was surprised when I left Cairo to find a
modern railway, that had been built by Said[Pg 211]
Pasha. We took the train for Alexandria. At
Alexandria we took passage for the Holy Land.
The Rev. J. R. MacFarlane, chaplain of Madras,
wanted to see Jerusalem and landed at Joppa, or
Jaffa, which has become famous for Napoleon’s
massacre.

In going through the Valley of Sharon, we saw
orange and lemon groves, and fruits of all
kinds. It was a lovely valley, but all of a sudden
we struck into the most desolate country I had
ever seen—a mountain, a desert, a wilderness of
rocks, ravines and cañons. There were rocks to
the right, rocks to the left, and rocks everywhere.
My dragoman had a mule and I a donkey. One of
these mules had irreverently been named Christ
and the other Jesus. To the perfect horror of the
clergyman—until he understood that the men could
say nothing else in English—the names of the
donkeys were spoken with every crack of the whip
all the way to Jerusalem. The lashing of those
donkeys became a medley of seeming profanity.

A few weeks before, several people had been
killed by the Bedouins on the desert. Every one
was talking about the dangers of the journey.
After we got over this wild district, through the
Valley of Jehoshaphat, we came upon a plateau and
saw Jerusalem in the distance. Beautiful is that
city for situation. Said my companions, at the
same instant, “There are the Bedouins!” A half
dozen horsemen were coming from the direction of[Pg 212]
Jerusalem. We feared danger, but Abram the
dragoman showed no fear. These men were
really not dangerous, being only “barkers” for
the hotels of Jerusalem. Neither my companion
nor myself had any idea that they were employes
of that kind.

One asked if we would go to “Smith’s” near
Mount Calvary, to “Jones’s” near the Via della
Rosa, or to another house on the site of Solomon’s
Temple. MacFarlane said, “Don’t notice these
people. Leave it to the dragoman.” He decided
that we should go to Smith’s. From that time,
until we left, for three days, I saw nothing
but humbug and tinsel, lying and cheating, ugly
women, sand-fleas and dogs, from Joppa through
Ramlah. The one lovely place was an oasis where
we stopped for luncheon. Of course this was a
long time before Mark Twain went there and wept
over the tomb of Adam.

In going through the Valley of Jehoshaphat, up
the Mount of Olives, of course I was impressed
with what survived of my Biblical education. New
England training was still strong in me. The
women of Bethlehem, carrying baskets on their
heads, with flowing robes of calico, were very
beautiful and healthy-looking; but when I got to
Bethlehem, and with my farm and cattle experience
looked for stalls and mangers, I was, of course,
disgusted at being taken down two flights and
shown an old wet cave as the place where the[Pg 213]
Saviour was said to have been born. I have kept
the morals of the old Methodists, I hope, but my
superstitious notions were disappearing every
minute I spent in Jerusalem.

Being in the Holy Land, all the stories I had
heard in boyhood came back to me. I thought of
Moses’s life. I had been taught to obey his commandments,
but as a child I saw that he had
broken in his own life those which say, thou shalt
not steal, thou shalt not commit adultery—had told
Aaron, his brother-in-law, to make a golden image,
and had got up a trust by means of which he might
get all the gold. “Thou shalt do no murder,” says
the law—but he killed an Egyptian and hid him in
the sand. “Thou shalt not commit adultery “—but
he committed that sin.

And so on to the end. These commandments
were taught by the man who had broken every one
of them himself. Aaron, who wished to be included
in the gold-corner into which Moses had
refused him admittance, sought to make money in
some other way, and said, “If we are going for
forty years into the wilderness, we shall want salt
provisions,” and so bought up all the hogs he could
find, without letting Moses into the corner. Then
Moses spoiled the whole game by the law that no
Jews should eat pork! In the Holy Land these
things all came into my mind. You can imagine
how I felt sixteen years after, when arrested and
detained for six months in the Tombs for quoting[Pg 214]
three columns of the Bible (about which I shall
speak later).

At night I wanted my clergyman companion
to gain an idea of night scenes in the East. To
make sure that we should not be disturbed, I went
to the chief of police for a guide to show us Jerusalem
by candle-light. We went into a dark alley,
back of Mount Calvary and the Via della Rosa,
when the man’s movements became suspicious. I
could not see why a policeman should be so careful
where he went. My object had been to see the
demi-monde of Syria.

When we got to the door, the policeman tried to
shut the door, but I put my foot in the way. I
asked MacFarlane if he was armed. He said he
had a Madras dagger. MacFarlane was already
in the room and I drew him out. “Those are
Bedouins,” said I; “I could see their pistols and
swords.” Intuition told me they were murderers.
Sixteen persons had been killed in Nablus in
’55-’56. The chief of police was the head of the
gang. I immediately saw our consul, and there
was a meeting of representatives of the foreign
powers, and the whole traffic was exposed. In
our case they found the men, and after we left
they were executed.[Pg 215]

CHAPTER XVI

IN THE CRIMEA

1856

The voyage from Joppa to Constantinople was
a succession of surprises, from Latokea to Lanarca,
Cyprus, Rhodes, and Smyrna. At Beyrout
we were the guests of a pasha, the leading man of
the place. Henry Kennard, banker, of Heywood,
Kennard & Co., of London, who had joined us in
Jerusalem, went with us through Syria and was
going as far as the Crimea. MacFarlane was still
with our party. We had a day off in Beyrout, and
went up to Lebanon, inland, where the cedars seem
to antedate the olive-trees in the Garden of Gethsemane.

When we got to Smyrna we entered a beautiful
bay, somewhat like that of Rio Janeiro, and I
went out on the fortified hill that overlooks the
city. I saw from the hill that troops were marching
on parade, and went off alone to see them. I
was told to let my donkey go his own way. He
brought me to a place where were about one hundred
stone steps, almost perpendicular. I had a[Pg 216]
little hesitation about going down these steps, but
he seemed to know what he was about, and I could
do nothing with him but hang on his back. I expected
him to tumble, and that would have been
the last of me. He didn’t miss a step, however, but
took me safely to the bottom. I thought of General
Putnam’s stone-step ride. If he had only had a
Turkish donkey he would have missed being a
hero.

My donkey seemed to know more than I about
the streets of Smyrna, and I gave him the rein.
He took me past the sentinels to the parade
ground, as he appeared to know the password, and
across the parade, which was against regulations.
When we arrived at the center of the ground, he
began very peculiar operations, as if he had been
with Barnum. Here was a donkey that would
have made a fortune for a circus. The soldiers
were coming up in platoons, when the donkey began
to stand on his hind feet, and then on his fore
feet. The roar of the advancing regiment convinced
me that I was in a tight place. I got off
his back and walked alone on the opposite side, and
then escaped through a gate. I have never heard
of the obstinate animal since.

From Smyrna to Constantinople we passed
among famous Greek islands—Rhodes, and Chios,
where twenty-two thousand Greeks were killed by
the Turks—but we had not time to stop at any of
them. At Constantinople I preferred to take pas[Pg 217]sage
in a transient steamer, instead of waiting
for the Government boat. I stopped here only
to see our minister, Carroll Spence, of Baltimore,
and then hurried on through the Marmoro
Strait and the Bosporus, and into the Black
Sea, and there found an immense fleet of transports,
from the port of Sebastopol. I was delighted
to see alongside of one another three of our
Boston clippers, built by Donald Mackay in East
Boston, that had brought French troops from
France: the Great Republic, Captain Limeburner,
the Monarch of the Seas, Captain Gardner, and the
Ocean Queen of clippers, Captain Zerega. Ships
filled the little bay, bows and sterns touching the
shore on one side and the other. Not one could
have got out in case of fire.

We immediately got horses to go out to Balaklava,
and there I was glad to meet my old friend,
Captain Furber, of the Black Ball Line and the
Ocean Clipper, who gave me a state-room and all
the courtesies of his ship. He had come for the
French. Kennard went with the British. Horses
and attendants were furnished me by the French
generals free of cost.

My object in going to the Crimea was to speculate
in munitions of war, which I supposed would
be sold for a mere bagatelle. But the armies took
their material away with them—English, Russian,
Turkish, French, Sardinian—so there was no
chance for business there. The British troops[Pg 218]
were in rags and tatters. Their new uniforms
had not arrived, and their shoes were worn out.
I went on board one of the clippers and spoke
about the shoes not having arrived. “What!”
exclaimed the captain; “I am loaded with shoes!
I have been here six months.” “Have you notified
the commissary?” “Yes.” What could I
do? All this was afterward described by “Bull
Run” Russell. He was then the correspondent of
the London Times, and so exposed the mismanagement
of the war that ships were sent with provisions,
uniforms, and everything, after the war
was over.

Through the courtesy of French officers, I
visited the city of Sebastopol, a ten-mile journey
from Balaklava, and saw the twenty-one-gun
battery, the Redan, and the Malakoff, and, of
course, the ruin of the famous city. I could
see the masts of the ships at the entrance of the
bay, the fleet that had been sunk by the Russians
to block the channel. Here they had crossed in the
night to the Star Fort on the opposite side, which
was strongly fortified. It would have been almost
impossible for the allied armies to interfere with
the Russians. They had made up their minds to
fight it out to the end.

The French zouave commander got up a banquet
for me with twenty of the officers of all the
armies—Turkish, French, English, Sardinian, and
Russian. I did something to stir up the battle[Pg 219]
spirit again, and several times almost got them
fighting over the table, especially when I asked
some question that brought a reply from the
zouave general of the Ninety-sixth regiment of
Algiers. He rose and said to the Englishmen
who had disputed his word: “You were asleep
at the Alma, you were late at Inkerman, late at
Balaklava, ran from the Redan and at Chernaya.”
This of course roused the English officers, and
we had to pour oil on troubled waters.

There were two princes among the Russians,
and of course they were delighted to see the
allies fighting among themselves. They helped me
in stirring up the quarrel. I made them admit
that Todleben’s earthworks were a new feature
in war—baskets of earth used for forts on the inside
of Sebastopol, put up impromptu, and holding
these armies so long at bay. In the Redan it
was complete slaughter, two thousand persons being
killed. MacMahon in the Malakoff saw at
once that it was not a close fort, and said, “J’y
suis, j’y reste.” Speaking of MacMahon, a very
singular thing has been suggested. Put together
a half dozen faces of French notables—MacMahon,
de Lesseps, Alexandre Dumas (père et
fils), Victor Hugo, President Faure, and add my
portrait, and you could hardly tell which was
which.

Tennyson has given to the charge of the Light
Brigade at Balaklava the power of his name and[Pg 220]
genius, but that fight has been a terribly exaggerated
affair, so far as massacre was concerned.
Only one third was killed, with nearly one half
the horses. In our civil war, where a million
men were killed, at the cost of a billion dollars,
from the firing into Sumter to Appomattox, on
both sides, there were many charges where the
slaughter was proportionately greater than that.
Take Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg, where a whole
division was mowed down—or Custer’s command
(with Sitting Bull, in the Black Hills), all massacred,
with the exception of one man.[Pg 221]

CHAPTER XVII

HOME ONCE MORE AND THEN A RETURN TO EUROPE

1856

From the Crimea I returned to England and
thence to America. Wilson, of the White Star
Line, wished to construct the largest clipper ever
built in England. It was to be called the George
Francis Train, as I had had in my consignment
or in my charge the fastest four clippers in the
world—Flying Cloud, eighty-six days from New
York to San Francisco; Sovereign of the Seas,
which stood in my name at the custom-house
(2,200 tons), which made three hundred and
seventy-four miles under sail in one day, a thing
never known before by a sailing ship; the Red
Jacket, built at Rockland, Maine; and the Lightning,
built by Donald Mackay at East Boston,
which sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne in
sixty-three days; but I declined the White Star
honors.

The day after my arrival in New York, in July,
’56—I had been away since February, ’53—the
Herald had sixteen columns, about three pages,[Pg 222]
from me in one issue, an amount of space I
think that no correspondent before or since has
had—either from India, China, or Japan. I had
arrived ahead of my own mail. The members of
the present staff of the Herald have no idea that
the man whom they have looked upon as a lunatic
was sufficiently sane to make a big sensation in
their paper in July, ’56. The present James
Gordon Bennett was then only fifteen years old.
Frederick Hudson had entire charge of the paper
under the elder Bennett. Mr. Bennett, wishing to
put his son ahead, pensioned Mr. Hudson, who
went into the country to live, and, in crossing a
railway track, was killed. Mr. Bennett gave me a
very kind reception. He asked if I desired to go
to Congress. “No,” I said. “Don’t you want to
publish books?” “Yes, but I am going abroad
now, as I am not through with my business in Australia.”

Here, at twenty-seven years of age, I had traveled
over the world, and had had these great business
experiences. I had been called, as a sneering
term, “Young America.” I kept the name,
and used it afterward in all my newspaper work.
But Freeman Hunt, of the Merchants’ Magazine,
who edited my books, changed it to An American
Merchant in Europe, Asia, and Australia,
thinking the title Young America not dignified
enough. This book was a series of letters from
Java, Singapore, China, Bengal, Egypt, the Holy[Pg 223]
Land, the Crimea, England, Melbourne, Sydney,
etc. It was published in ’57 in New York and
London.

From New York I went to Boston, and escaped
my first opportunity of going to jail by giving
bail bond for $80,000. George B. Upton represented
my house in Boston and was in Europe. He
was traveling at the time, and his people instructed
him to have me arrested for any interest the Barings
might have, through open credits, in our firm.
Colonel Enoch Train and Donald Mackay signed
the bond. The claim was that I had made a
lot of money, and had not given to others what
was their due. I had never used the Barings’
credit out in Australia, and returned to them
$50,000. So far as Upton was concerned, I had
paid my partner, Captain Caldwell, $8,000 in cash,
when he went home in the Red Jacket only a few
months after his arrival in Melbourne. This was
my first false arrest and legal prosecution. From
this time for many years I kept getting into jail,
for no crime whatever.

After looking over the accounts in the books for
’57, Upton came the next year to me in New York,
just as I was going abroad, and said, “We are in a
tight place in Boston.” Imagine my astonishment
when he asked if I was willing that any little
account coming to me should be placed to my
credit, and used to help him out. Considering
that I had been arrested for $80,000, I thought[Pg 224]
this peculiar. He gave me a credit for £500 on the
Barings, however; it seems that $6,000 had been
sent to me by the house in Melbourne while I was
away. Inasmuch as I have never since inquired
how my account stood with Upton, I should like
to have his son look at the books, and see what may
be due me.

In ’56 I took my wife and baby Sue to Paris. I
had observed in Europe that the Germans were
more far-sighted than we in learning many languages.
The bright German boy in a country
town is taught French and English, and then
sent to Bremen or Hamburg to get the practical
education of merchants in great shipping houses.
Afterward, he is sent to England to find out other
modes of doing business. Then perhaps he establishes
a house in New York. I found that German
merchants, all over the world, were far ahead of
ours, because of their practical training and mastery
of languages. Seeing, in my travels around
the world, that the German was everywhere, I determined
to learn languages, and went to Paris for
that purpose.

We took rooms at the Grand Hôtel de Louvre,
in the Rue de Rivoli, and I at once went to Galignani,
of “The Messenger,” to find teachers. Under
a Catholic priest, I studied Italian and French
at the same time, which may account for my having
a little of the Italian accent in my French.
I have never known an Italian who was able to[Pg 225]
master the French accent. I also learned Portuguese
and Spanish. This gave me the four Latin
languages. I had, in ’48, studied German under
Gasper Bütts, who came to America during the
Revolution of ’48 with Carl Schurz. German
texts and pronunciation I had to practise every
day, but as I have never had a fancy for that language,
I have not kept it up. I sent my sons to
Frankfort-on-the-Main to learn German, and afterward
to Seelig’s College in Vevey, Switzerland,
in ’71, to learn Italian and French. My daughter
Sue was sent to Stuttgart, and she is thoroughly
acquainted with both German and French.[Pg 226]

CHAPTER XVIII

MEN I MET IN PARIS

1856-1857

My life in Paris seems now like a romance to
my memory. I was twenty-seven, and thought I
had seen all the world, but discovered how little
I knew, compared with others whom I met. I
found, as in all these foreign cities, that notables
in society and in public life often did not know one
another. At Count Arthur De La More’s, of the
Orleanist staff, I found the greatest hostility
toward the Emperor. One day we were sitting in
the entresol, at his rooms on the Rue de Rivoli,
opposite the Tuileries, and he asked me whether I
could see that man walking on the veranda of the
Tuileries. I said I could, to which he replied:
“Could one of your sharpshooters pick him off
from here?” I looked up with surprise, and
thought I saw the future assassin of the Emperor,
but said nothing. I told him some of our
men like Daniel Boone and David Crockett could
have picked off a squirrel as far as they could see
it. It was a little while after this that the Orsini[Pg 227]
bomb was fired at the Emperor. This was because
Napoleon, though a member of the Carbonari,
had “gone back on” the order; but his life
was spared.

Prince Galitzen of Russia gave me a dinner
at the Café Philippe, where I met some of the
Russian nobility. These men were the cleverest
I have ever seen. All were good linguists, artists,
statesmen, soldiers, men of the world. At Prince
Czartoryski’s I met leading Poles, who were still
revolutionists, plotting against Russia. One of
these, a man of about eighty, said to me: “In my
teens I went to St. Petersburg, saw Alexander
and told him the condition of Poland. I asked
him what he was going to do. He asked me what
I should recommend. ‘There are two ways of
governing Poland,’ I said; ‘through interest or
through fear.’ Fear was the policy adopted. When
I was forty, I again went to St. Petersburg.
Nicholas was Czar, and he repeated the same question.
I again answered, ‘through interest or
through fear.’ When I was sixty I met another
Emperor, and the same question was put to me,
and I made the same reply. Poland is partitioned,”
he added; “and we are now only a
memory.”

At Leon Lillo’s I met many Spaniards of the
nobility and the ruling family. I still think that
Lillo was the son of Queen Cristina, by her husband
the Duke of Rianzares, a common soldier, of[Pg 228]
physical beauty, whom she had taken from the
ranks and made a Duke. I used to meet him at
Lillo’s. Cristina, who was then probably the
richest woman in the world, had bought Malmaison,
the palace of Josephine. It was through this
connection that I met Salamanca, the Spanish
Rothschild, her banker. I shall speak later of
how I got the funds to build the Atlantic and
Great Western Railway, connecting the Erie Railway
with the Ohio and Mississippi Railway.

At the Marquis del Grillo’s I met his wife, the
great Italian tragedienne, Ristori, whom I had seen
on the stage in “Elizabeth.” I met leading men of
the Second Empire at the house of the Count de
Rouville, including Persigny, the Foreign Minister,
Count de Morny, the Minister of War,
Walewski, Prince “Plon-Plon,” and Mocquard, private
secretary to the Emperor. At Triat’s Gymnase
I met the men who afterward organized the,
Commune. At the house of Mrs. Winfield Scott,
who was then living in Paris, I met many Americans,
and at Castle’s I saw “Bohemia.”

Meeting all these different persons, distinguished
in the great world of Paris, I was gaining
the knowledge that would make me a walking
library of political affairs in Europe. This made
up for the loss of a college career. Practical experience
and observation were my university.

That year, ’56-’57, was a very important time
in my life in many ways. I received an invitation[Pg 229]
to a ball at the Tuileries, engraved in the usual
style, on a card a foot square, and bearing the
enormous seal of the Second Empire. For the
first time in my life I appeared in borrowed
plumes. I hired what I call a “flunkey” suit, and
paid forty-five francs for it. In this I was presented.
It was not a civil nor a military suit, but
a sort of mongrel affair, that served me as a
court costume. Of course, my wife appeared in
proper evening dress. There were four thousand
persons present, the highest in the society of
Paris, military and civil—ambassadors in their regalia,
regimental officers in their different uniforms,
and the aristocracy in their robes. There
were also Algerian officers. Although the Tuileries
was very large, the four thousand guests
found themselves in much crowded rooms.

During this reception and ball I suddenly felt
some cold substance going down my back. Putting
my hand to my neck, I found there a cupful of ice-cream
that an Algerian officer had dropped, with
the usual “Pardon, monsieur.” I assured him
it was all right, but the ice-cream gave me a decidedly
boreal feeling.

The ball was in the usual court style, and I
shall not undertake to describe it. After some
time had passed, all at once there was silence, instead
of the terrible hum. It was the presage of
something important, I felt sure. The wax candles
in the chandeliers burned brilliantly, and we were[Pg 230]
all on the qui vive to know what was coming. Looking
toward the great folding doors at the end of
the hall, a lady appeared. It was the age of crinoline,
and she must have had a circumference of
eight feet. She was the Emperor’s favorite, the
Countess Castiglione. The sensation she made
was tremendous.

I should mention that before this happened I
had been presented to the Empress. We were all
ranged in diplomatic order for presentation, and
when it came my turn she seemed particularly
courteous, saying in English to me: “You speak
French very fluently.” To this I replied:
“When I am able to speak French, your Majesty,
as well as you speak English, I shall be willing to
trust myself in that language. In the meanwhile
let me ask you to talk as you prefer.” All those
presented seemed surprised to see me talking with
the Empress, as it was, I believe, unusual for a
foreigner and a newcomer to be thus honored. She
was very gracious, and made me feel as much
at home as if I had been in my own family.
The introduction of the crinoline had been made by
the Empress before the birth of the Prince Imperial.
Anti-Imperialists had been busy gossiping
about the coming event, and intimated that it was
impossible the Emperor could become the father
of a child.

After the Countess Castiglione appeared in
such dare-devil fashion, in the presence of the[Pg 231]
whole court, the Empress appeared in much different
mood. The next day she went to England,
and became the guest of the Queen for three
weeks.

The Italian war was then going on, and I was
desirous of mastering the Italian language, in
order to carry out certain contracts I had made
with the Emperor. McHenry was my partner,
and I had written to him that the Emperor
wanted a half dozen steamers immediately. The
French needed the boats for the transport of provisions.
McHenry was in London, and in my letter
I told him there was no doubt that the war
would eventually be won by France and Italy.
This was just after the great battles of Magenta
and Solferino. He sent me back this despatch:
“La paix est signé.” You can imagine my surprise.
It shows that the most careful of men
sometimes make mistakes.

Mr. Seward, afterward Secretary of State,
was in Paris in ’56-’57, and I showed him as much
of Paris as I dared. There were certain places
to which I did not feel authorized to take him, but
I managed to make him see a great deal of Paris
that would have been sealed to him had he undertaken
to go about this microcosmic city without
a guide.

Mr. Seward astonished me very much one day
by a remark showing his detachment from the
great world of European thought and power. I[Pg 232]
said to him: “Mr. Seward, how would you like to
see M. Lamartine?” “Which Lamartine?” he
coolly asked, as if there could be more than one.
“Why, Alphonse de Lamartine,” said I. “There
is only one Lamartine in France or in the world.”
He asked if I knew him. I replied that Lamartine
gave receptions twice a week, and that I had attended
them during the winter. As there was a
reception that day, I asked Mr. Seward if he cared
to go. He very gladly accepted the invitation, and
we went together.

Lamartine, it will be remembered, married an
English lady, a most charming, lovely woman; but
he had never learned to speak English. He was
like Hugo in this respect, and thought it was not
worth while to struggle through the intricacies
and difficulties of the spelling and pronunciation.
But Madame Lamartine spoke French very
fluently and accurately.

I have observed as an invariable rule, from
one end of the world to the other, that if one person
addresses another in a language the second
person does not understand, the talker thinks he
can make himself understood by simply bawling
out his sentences like a town-crier. Mr. Seward
was no exception to this common frailty among
mankind. When he saw that Lamartine did not
understand his English, he placed his hand over
his mouth, and shouted into M. Lamartine’s ear.
The great Frenchman smiled at each discharge,[Pg 233]
but could not reply. At last I said, “Mr. Seward,
M. Lamartine is not deaf, but he does not understand
English. If you will permit either
Madame Lamartine or myself to interpret for you,
there will be no difficulty.” Mr. Seward continued
to shout for some time, but finally broke
down. Madame Lamartine and I then translated
his remarks to Lamartine. After this we got along
finely, and a most delightful conversation followed
between the two men.

It had been my intention, when I came to Paris,
to go on to Australia; but as I passed through the
various countries of Europe I saw that the shadow
of panic and failure rested upon all. I had, indeed,
completed many arrangements for going
back to Melbourne, and I had got a letter of
credit from the representative in London of the
Bank of New South Wales for £20,000; but the
project fell through, because of the panics and
disasters of the year ’57.

In ’58—I may mention at this place—I had a
few months’ leisure on my hands, and decided to
give my wife and her stepmother, Mrs. George T.
M. Davis, a trip about Europe. We traveled
through France, Italy, Austria, and Germany. At
Leghorn we went to witness a spectacular exhibition
of the storming of Sebastopol. It was a magnificent
spectacle, realistic in the extreme. No one
was astonished, when, at the very point where the
city was taken and the fort blown up, a terrific[Pg 234]
burst of light appeared. Instantly thereafter we
discovered that the explosion had been too real.
The theater was ablaze. Of course there was a
wild rush for the doors. Panic followed, and
while we were crushed and trampled in the press,
we got off finally with only severe bruises. The
official report next morning gave the casualties as
forty killed and one hundred injured; but the Government
suppressed the facts. The dead and injured
far outnumbered these figures.

We had an experience in Naples which illustrated
the every-day use of words by the English
that to us are offensive. We were aboard one of
the dirty little steamboats that were found in that
part of the Mediterranean, and, as the weather
was somewhat rough, the bilge water had been
shaken about in the night, and a terrible odor pervaded
every nook of the vessel. An English
nobleman was aboard, and in the morning, wishing
to say something agreeable to my wife’s stepmother,
he said: “Madam, didn’t you observe a
dreadful stink in your state-room last night?”
The blood of all the Pomeroys was fired by this
supposed indelicacy. “Sir!” Mrs. Davis retorted,
stepping back with great hauteur. I immediately
advanced and said, “My dear madam, the gentleman
meant no harm. The English prefer that
‘nasty’ word to something more refined and less
shocking. He meant no insult.” The Englishman
explained; but the lady was not appeased.[Pg 235]

At Rome I was astonished to find a delegation
awaiting me. I could not make out what it meant,
when I was hailed as a “liberator.” There were
many “liberators” in the Italy of those days; and
I supposed they mistook me for Mazzini, or Garibaldi,
or Orsini, or some other leader of the people.
“Whom do you think I am?” I asked.
“Citizen George Francis Train,” they said. This
was too much for my credulity. What was worse
still, they asked me to go with them. I did not
know just where they expected me to go, or what
they would expect me to do when I got there.
Things were pretty black in Italy just then, and I
did not desire to be mixed up in “revolutions,” or
liberty movements, or conspiracies. However,
they assured me that it would be all right, and I
consented to go. I went through a dark alley, to
their meeting place, and was told more things
about the revolution than I cared to know or to
remember. It was not a healthful kind of knowledge
to carry about Italy with one.

But the curious thing about the affair was that
here, as everywhere, these people regarded me as
a leader of revolts—Carbonari, La Commune,
Chartists, Fenians, Internationals—as if I were
ready for every species of deviltry. For fifteen
years five or six governments kept their spies
shadowing me in Europe and America.

From Italy we passed into Austria. At
Vienna we had the opportunity, through the cour[Pg 236]tesy
of some friends near the court, of witnessing
a splendid celebration by the Order of Maria
Teresa, which was the most gorgeous and most
beautiful spectacle I think I have ever seen. We
soon returned to London, and then came to
America, where I was to resume work on projects
and enterprises here.[Pg 237]

CHAPTER XIX

BUILDING THE ATLANTIC AND GREAT WESTERN
RAILWAY

1857-1858

The great project of a connecting railway between
the Eastern and the Middle Western States
had been in my mind for some years. Queen
Maria Cristina’s fortune, which was then the
greatest possessed by any woman in the world,
seemed to me to offer a solution of the problem.
I had no idea, of course, of attempting to use her
fortune in any schemes of my own and for my
own interest, but I saw at once that I could utilize
her idle wealth to the tremendous advantage of
the United States and, at the same time, render a
service to her.

The Queen had had a large quantity of funds
in the old United States Bank that President Jackson
smashed, and James McHenry, who was connected
with me in many enterprises, learned that
she had taken as securities some coal lands in
Pennsylvania. I saw the Duke of Rianzares, the
guardsman Fernando Muñoz, whom Maria Cris[Pg 238]tina
had fallen in love with and made a grandee
of her kingdom, and finally married in ’44. He had
his headquarters at Lillo’s in the Square Clary,
and he introduced me to the Queen’s secretary,
Salerno. I suggested to the Spaniards the advisability
of hunting up these coal lands of the
Queen. McHenry had already made arrangements
for me to go to America with her assistant
secretary, Don Rodrigo de Questa, who did not
know a word of English. The preliminaries were
arranged, and we set out for Liverpool and
America.

One of the first of many difficulties into which
poor de Questa fell because of his ignorance of
English occurred the first day out from Liverpool.
The Spaniard, with a fatuous assumption common
to Europeans, thought that whenever he failed to
find the exact word he wanted in another tongue
than his own, all that was necessary was to use
French. The Spaniard asked the steward to get
him some fish for breakfast. He knew the Spanish
word would not answer, and could not think of
the English word, though he had tried to master
it for some time. He then fell back upon the
French, and asked for “poisson.” Of course, the
steward thought he wanted poison, and reported
the matter to headquarters, thinking suicide was
contemplated.

De Questa would have had serious trouble but
for the thoughtfulness of the steward, who remem[Pg 239]bered
that I was traveling with him and came to
me for advice. “When did he ask for poison?”
I inquired. “At breakfast-time,” said the steward.
“Oh, then, he merely wants fish,” and I explained
as well as I could to an English steward
the meaning of the French word.

The English of the ignorant classes look upon
French very much as a clergyman does upon profanity,
or as a missionary regards the muttered
charms and incantations of a “voodoo” priestess.
De Questa finally got his fish, but he had long before
lost his appetite. This adventure discouraged
him so much that he refused thenceforth to
try to convey in English, Castilian, or French,
any of his desires concerning food, but resorted
to the primitive sign language. When he wanted
eggs, he would flap his arms together and cackle
like a hen that has just laid an egg. The steward
who, perhaps, had never seen two square inches of
countryside in his life, thought he was imitating a
rooster and laughed until he almost had a fit. De
Questa nearly starved. He had, at last, to eat
whatever he could find, without trying to seek
what he wanted. I explained to him that roosters
did not lay eggs!

Our destination was Philadelphia. It was
there that the Spaniards who were living upon
Queen Maria Cristina’s property had their headquarters.
I found two of them, Christopher and
John Fallon, living in fine houses, with something[Pg 240]
of a court about them. They had control of about
forty thousand acres of coal lands belonging to
the Queen. This large tract was situated at a
place to which the Fallons had given their name,
Fallonville. I at once consulted several of the
best lawyers of Philadelphia, among them William
B. Reed, later Minister to China, and was advised
to go immediately to the lands and see what
had been done with them. I made an appointment
with John Fallon, and we went out to the
mines. I can not now recall exactly where they
were, but I remember that we passed through a
wilderness, after leaving the train that took us
from Philadelphia, and that we had a very long
drive in carriages. A railway track had been
built through the forest to the mines, and it seemed
to me about fifteen miles long. I appeared to John
Fallon as a foreigner who was interested in mines
and in coal lands in particular, but not, of course,
as representing the Queen.

As soon as I returned to Philadelphia and reported
what I had learned, my lawyers advised me
to go back to Paris and report to the Queen. De
Questa and I, therefore, returned as soon as possible.
McHenry met me in London, and we went
on to Paris together. We had a conference with
Lillo and with Don José de Salamanca, the Queen’s
banker, and it was decided that the Queen should
take active possession of her immense property
at once. I saw that there was a great deal of[Pg 241]
money in the land, and that there was a fine opportunity
for the Atlantic and Great Western
Railway, if I could in some way get the use of a
portion of this vast coal domain.

I saw also that my connection with the affair
had already given me a lever with which
I could work to some purpose upon Don José
de Salamanca, and that this was the best card to
play.

As soon as possible I went to his banking
office and asked for a conference. I had learned
enough, in my dealings with bankers and financiers,
to know that you must approach them on
the right side, from the side of money, and not
from that of a mere wish. Accordingly I wrote
on my card that I wished to propose a loan of
$1,000,000. I really came as a borrower, but circumstances
permitted me to play the rôle of the
lender. I was admitted at once, but if I had asked
outright for a loan I should have been shown the
door. As soon as I was in his presence I said,
without preface: “I have no cash in my pockets,
nor would you wish it if I had; but I want to show
you something.”

“I understood that you wanted to lend me a
million,” said the Spaniard. “I do not see the
million.”

“You will, when I explain,” I said. “I want
to use your credit.” (I knew that he had none
in London and that he could do nothing there.)[Pg 242]
“I propose to deposit with you $2,000,000 of the
bonds of the Atlantic and Great Western Railway
for $1,000,000 of your notes.”

I knew that the bait of a credit in London
would affect him, as the Spanish bankers had long
tried in vain to establish their credit in the financial
metropolis of the world.

“Where is this property?” he asked.