The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-01-19

Few of the younger generation are
familiar with the name Of George Fran
els Train, and yet, at one time, he was
one of the best-known Americans on
the face of the globe. His career has
been decidedly checkered, and his rec
ord of achievement IS certainly remark
able. He organized the clipper-ship line
that sailed around Cape Horn TO San
Francisco, and made American shipping
lead the world; he organized the Credit
MobiIier and the Union Pacific Rail-
road ne figured prominently in the
French Commune; he was an independ-
ent candidate for the Presidency,
against Grant and Greeley; he broke
the around-th -the-worId record three
times. and gave Jules Verne the sug-
gestlon for his interesting romance,
Around the World in Eighty Days;
he has been in jail fifteen times, al
though he never committed a crime;
he formerly lived in a villa at New
port and spent $1,000 a week in main
tanning it, while today, at the age of
seventy three, he lives in seclusion in
the Mills Hotel in New York at total
expenditure of $500 a week.
AT the earnest request of f.iends,
<'Citizen" Train-as he calls himself
was induced to dictate his biography,
which, with his characteristic speed, ne
accomplished in thirty-nve hours. He
calls it My Life in Many States and in
Foreign Lands and in his preface
says: Il beg my readers to remember
that this book was spoken, not writ
ten, by me. It is my own life story
that / 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 blame
less in purpose. If should fail at any
point, this will be due to some waver-
ing Of memory, and not to intention.
Thanks to my early Methodist training,
[ have never knowingly told a lie, and
I shall not begin at this time of life"
Mr.. Train makes a vague promise of
other volumes to come-his views and
opinions of men and things and a coll
lection of his speeches and addresses.
When in his fourth year, his fathers
family was wiped out by a cholera epi-
demic and he was sent to his grand
parents in Massachusetts,, where he was
reared in the strictest tenets of Method
ism. Nevertheless, he observed some
Inconsistencies in preaching
and practice in the daily life of his
He was constantly being
warned against smoking and drinking.
At the age of ten, he was accustomed
to drive fourteen miles alone to Bos-
ton and market the. products of his
aunt's farm. George Ripley, the Brook
Farm leader and associate of Charles
a. Dana, was at one time his school
teacher. The boys organized a library.
committee at Waltham, and got Ralph
Waldo Emerson to lecture to them. II
will come to lecture for So for myself, -
wrote Emerson, but ask you for four
quarts of oats for my horse The dis
course that Emerson delivered for this
modest honorarium was his famous one
on Nature for which In after years
ne received $500 a night.
BY a characteristic bit of audacity
he secured a place as boy in the large
shipping firm of Train & Co. of Bos-
on, of which his cousin was the head.
Here he rapidly developed brilliant
business qualities and began leading
he house into daring but successful
chemes. The California gold craze was
ust then creating an eager demand for
,essel transportation. Young Train
vent to Donald Mackay, the Boston
hip-builder, and ordered sailing YES
el of 1000 tons, an unprecedented ton
age. Il shall call it the Flying
loud" he said. BY the time the Fly
ag Cloud was finished the whole world
7as talking about it, and its launching
7as historic event. The demand for
was so eager that it was sold for
30, 600 to a Liverpool firm. 1t sailed f
rom New York to San Francisco in e
ighty-six days, paying for itself in a ;,
ngle voyage out and back. That was
1e beginning of the great epoch of o
.merican clippers. Within a year or V