Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1869-07-17
SATURDAY MORNING, JULY IL, 1860
Train Oil.


The irrepressible George Francis Train
has put forth an extra" from the office of
the Seattle Mtell;yencer, giving sensa-
tional account of his late visit to Puget
Sound. Among other gems, the. extra
contains three or four original epigrams,
furnishing abundant internal evidence that
Train is quite as much mistaken in regard
to himself as arc his other admirers. and
that he is, after all, no imposter, but SIM
ply talking fool ,swho honestly believes
himself a great man. The composition or
publication of these cpigrams cannot be
reconciled with common sense. Let us
take the one on Puget Sound as sample,
and it is probably neither better nor worse
than the remainder Its author could be
convicted in any court having jurisdiction,
upon perhaps as many coants as there are
lines, for numbering the Kings Eng
li<h," to say nothing Of the repeated viola
ton of truth and even possibility in its
matter. The first four lines are as follows:
Though Vancouver. Lewis, Clark and GRAY.
So many winters since: have passed away,
These early explorers have ief, their trail
For Pacific Port tina, unites the Atlantic
rail.
Waving the inaccuracy Of the word trail
as used here to describe ocean routes Of
travel, as the = early explorers !" mentioned
in the first line came from several dircc-
lions if they left anything it must have
been trails !; but trails does not rhyme with
rail, and our author, as he could not secure
both grammar and rhyme, took that which
pleased him most. Pursuing his idea that
all the points touched by these early ex-
riorers' are "their trail as its width
would extend from San Francisco to Puget
Sound, that of course is precisely what they
have left - for Pacific port that unites
:hc Atlantic rail
The next four lines have the same OBJ
security and the same sacrifice Of grammar
and sense to the necessity Of rhyme:
g Here the Fa;hcad Indians whose Monaghan
Shows where the red man crossed the Tartar
race.
And with his cedar canoe on. Puget Sound.
Gave Mckay themodclfor his ship Stag Hound -
The Flathead Indians docs not CORES
pond in numLer with either face or
shows "Os Puget Sound" is rcdun-
dency and tautology, INDUCED in merely
for the purpose Of introducing word that
would rhyme with - hound" the first
word Of the sentence having fully informed
Ms where the wonderful things recited were
shown by the g Monaghan face" i. c.
"here," where this tremendous epigram
was written, on Puget Sound. We can
see how the Indians Monaghan face"
might indicate to poetic imagination
cross of the races, but we are at loss to dis
cover what evidence it furnishes that his
cedar canoe gave Mckay the model for
his ship Stag Hound yet this is one Of
the many things which, according to the
epigram are shown by the :. Monaghan
face"
In the next four lines, the Mongolian
face" shows still more astounding things,
viz:
" Where thousand saw mills working night
and day
And thousand clippers bear their work away,
Naerc millions of timber, spars and piles
Giri the mountain range for a thousand miles.
4 thou sand saw-mills" is, for ought
We know, more than there are in the world
We believe the entire number on Puget
Sound is less than twenty. But consider
ing it merely as figure Of imagination, it
still seems to us quite as much out of pro-
portion as the barn which was seven humid
red feet long and two feet wide. A thou.
sand saw-mills," is an awfully grand con-
eeptiou, but " millions of timber" as the
term is understood here, does not imply
moro than the mills would cut in a few
hnnr, AMI thea thing. s,un very like