My Life In Many States And In Foreign Lands, Dictated In My Seventy-Fourth Year

My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands

DICTATED IN MY SEVENTY-FOURTH YEAR BY GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1902 Copyright, 1902 By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Published November, 1902...

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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

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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 bee

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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 passeng

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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 Pick

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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 ver

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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, i

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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 Tra

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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 the

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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

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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

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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

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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 forgot

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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 chieftainc

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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,

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CHAPTER XIV

IN CHINESE CITIES 1855-1856 At Hongkong I went to our correspondents, Williams, Anthon &amp; 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 c

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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

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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 &amp; 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 t

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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 hundr

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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

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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 t

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CHAPTER XX

A VISIT TO RUSSIA 1857 The year '57 was a memorable period in my life in many ways. The great panic of the time swept away my ambitious projects as if they had been so many dreams and visions. My contracts in Italy were destroyed by the peace of Villa Franca, and my Australian plans were defeated by the panic. I was therefore ready to take up anything that looked promising; but, as I had nothing immediately on hand, I took advantage of the enforced leisure to see more of England and the continen

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CHAPTER XXI

BUILDING THE FIRST STREET-RAILWAYS IN ENGLAND 1858 In '58, when I visited Philadelphia on business of Queen Maria Cristina, of Spain, I observed the network of street-railways in that city, which then, perhaps, had the most perfect system of surface transportation in the world. I was struck with the idea of the great convenience these railways must be to business men and to all workers, and wondered why London, with so many more persons, had never had recourse to the street-railway. At that time

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CHAPTER XXII

ENGLAND AND OUR CIVIL WAR—BLOCKADE RUNNING I have referred already to the antagonism felt toward me in certain English quarters because of my speeches in favor of the Federal American Union in the hour of its danger. Love of country was always stronger in me than love of money, and I let slip no opportunity to defend the cause of the Union and to prove to the English of the upper classes that they were mistaken in supposing that the Confederacy could succeed. Those who were not in England at thi

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CHAPTER XXIII

BUILDING THE UNION PACIFIC RAILWAY 1862-1870 When the Englishmen tore up my street-railways in England, I made a speech in which I told them I would build a railway across the Rocky Mountains and the Great American Desert which would ruin the old trade routes across Egypt to China and Japan. I pointed out then that this route would be far shorter in time than the old route, and that Europe would soon be traversing America to reach the Orient. This was no new idea, sprung at the moment in a feeli

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CHAPTER XXIV

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FAR WEST 1863-1870 Very much of my work that has aided most in the development of this country was done in the great region of the Northwest, then a wild country, trackless and uninhabited except by savages. Of course, the chief achievement in the West was the building of the Union Pacific Railway, which led up to the inception and construction of other railways and to the present prosperity of the entire section. But this enterprise was merely a beginning. I looked upon i

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CHAPTER XXV

THE SHARE I HAD IN THE FRENCH COMMUNE 1870 My participation in the Commune in France, in the year '70, was the result of chance. I arrived at Marseilles at a very critical time in the history of that city. It was the hour when the Commune, or, as it was styled there by many, the "Red Republic," was born. I was on a tour of the world, the voyage in which I eclipsed all former feats of travel, and circled the globe in eighty days. This served Jules Verne, two years later, as the groundwork for his

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CHAPTER XXVI

A CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT 1872 I have passed a great many days in jail. A jail is a good place to meditate and to plan in, if only one can be patient in such a place. Much of my work was thought out and wrought out while living in the fifteen jails of which I have been a tenant. It was in a jail in Dublin, called the Four Courts' Marshalsea, that a feeling of confidence that I might one day be President of the United States first came into definite form. It was in this prison, also, that I plann

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CHAPTER XXVII

DECLARED A LUNATIC 1872-1873 I had hardly got out of the Presidential race before I got into jail again. I passed easily from one kind of life to the other. In fact, the last thing I did in connection with my political campaign had been the indirect cause of getting me into the Tombs. The Tombs has the honor of being the fourteenth jail that has given me shelter for purposes of meditation. In November, '72, I was making a speech from Henry Clews's steps in Wall Street, partly to quiet a mob, whe

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CHAPTER XXVIII

AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY, SIXTY-SEVEN, AND SIXTY DAYS 1870, 1890, 1892 I went around the world in eighty days in the year '70, two years before Jules Verne wrote his famous romance, Le Tour du Monde en Quatre-vingts Jours, which was founded upon my voyage. Since then I have made two tours of the world, one in sixty-seven and a half days, and the other in sixty. The last voyage still stands as the record trip in circling the globe. I have always been something of a traveler, restless in my earl

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