The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1904-01-19
GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN
TILE PRINCE Of BCCBN3RLCS

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
Mobilier and the Union Pacific Rail-
road; he figured prominently in the
French Commune; he was an independ-
ent candidate for the Presidency,
against Grant and Greeley; he broke
the around-the-WOrd record three
times, and gave Jules Verne the sug-
gestion for his interesting romance,
Around the World m 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 friends,
Citizen" Train-as ne calls himself
was induced to dictate his biography,
which, with his characteristic speed, he
a accomplished in thirty-five 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. 1t is my own life story
that l have related. 1t may not, in
every part, agree with the recoIlections
of others; but / am sure that it is as
accurate in statement as it is blame
less in purpose. If 1 should fail at any
III 10
ing of memory, and not to intention.
Thanks to my early Methodist training,
have never knowingly told a lie, and
l shall not begin at this time of life"
Mr.. Train makes a vague promise of
Z Their volumes to come-his views and
opinions of men and things and a col
lection Of his speeches and addresses.
When in his fourth year, his fathers
family was wiped out by a cholera cpl
| demic, he was sent to his grand
parents in Massachusetts, where he was
reared in the strictest tenets of Method
ism. Nevertheless, he observed some
strange Inconsistencies in preaching
and practice in the daily life of his
grandparents. 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
units 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 Walthum, and got Ralph
Waldo Emerson to lecture to them. Il
will come to lecture for IS for myself, "
wrote Emerson, but ask you for four
quarters of oats for my horse" The
| discourse that Emerson delivered for
/ this modest honorarium was his famous
one on Nature" for which in after
, years he received $500 a night.
BY a characteristic bit Of audacity he
secured a place as a boy in the large
shipping firm of Train & Co., of Bos-
ton Of which his cousin was the head.
Here he rapidly developed brilliant
business qualities and began leading
| the house into daring but successful
! schemes. The California gold craze was
| just then creating an eager demand for
vessel transportation. Young Train
went to Donald Mackay, the Boston
! ship-builder and ordered a sailing YES
sci of 1000 tons, an unprecedented ton
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