My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands Part 4

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 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 pa.s.sed 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 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 cla.s.s, at the urgent request of the grocer, Mr. Holmes, because I could not see the necessity of G.o.d, and no one could ever explain to me the reason why there should be, or is, a G.o.d. 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 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 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 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.

CHAPTER VI

IN A s.h.i.+PPING 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 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 s.h.i.+pping house of Train & Co., at 37 Lewis Wharf. The big granite building seemed t.i.tanic 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 s.h.i.+pping 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 s.h.i.+pping 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.

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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+lling, 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. 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 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 una.s.suming, and not in very affluent circ.u.mstances. I suppose his salary from the Government at the time was not more than $1,000 a year.