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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 been stranded very soon if he had not had the good sense to marry my beautiful grandmother, who had a thousand-acre farm at Waltham, ten miles out of Boston. My grandfather thus could preach around about the neighborhood, and then come back to the family at home. My father married the eldest daughter of this Methodist preaching grandfather of mine, Maria Pickering.

I was born at No. 21 High Street, Boston, during a snow-storm, on the 24th of March, '29. When I was a baby, my father went to New Orleans and opened a store. Soon after arriving in that city I was old enough to observe things, and to remember. I can recollect almost everything in my life from my fourth year. From the time I was three years old up to this present moment—a long stretch of seventy years, the Prophet's limit of human life—I can remember almost every event in my life with the greatest distinctness. This book of mine will be a pretty fair test of my memory.

I can remember the beautiful flowers of the South. How deeply they impressed themselves upon my mind! I can recall the garden with its wonderful floral wealth, the gift of the Southern sun. I can recollect exactly how the old clothesline used to look, with its load of linen—the resting-place of the long-bodied insects we called "devil's darning needles," or mosquito hawks—and how we children used to strike the line with poles, to frighten the insects and see them fly away on their filmy wings. And I can remember going down to my father's store, filling the pockets of my little frock with dried currants, which I thought were lovely, and watching him there at his work.

Rev. George Pickering, George Francis Train's grandfather.

Then came the terrible yellow-fever year. It is still known there as the year of the fever, or of the plague. This fearful epidemic swept over the city, and left it a city of the dead. It was a catastrophe recalled to me by that of Martinique. My family suffered with the rest of the city. I remember well the horror of the time. There were no hearses to be had. Physicians and undertakers had gone to the grave with their patients and patrons. The city could not afford to bury decently so many of its dead inhabitants. And the fear of the plague had so shaken the human soul that men stood afar off, aghast, and did only what they had to do in a coarse, brutal, swift burial of the dead.

There were no coffins to be had, and no one could have got them if there had been enough of them. Corpses were buried, all alike, in coarse pine boxes, hastily put together in the homes—and often by the very hands—of the relatives of the dead. One day they brought into our home a coarse pine box. I did not know what it was or for what it was meant. Then I saw them take the dead body of my little sister Josephine and put it hastily into the rough pine box. I was too young to understand it all, but I can never forget that scene; it starts tears even now. After nailing up the box and marking it to go "To the Train Vaults," the family sat and waited for the coming of the "dead wagon." The city sent round carters to pick up the numerous dead, just as it had formerly sent out scavenger carts to take away the refuse.

We could hear the "dead wagon" as it approached. We knew it by the dolorous cry of the driver. It drew nearer and nearer to our home. It all seemed so terrible, and yet I could not understand it. I heard the wagon stop under our window. Now the scene all comes back to me, and it recalls the rumble and rattle of those tumbrels of the French Reign of Terror: only it was the fever, instead of the guillotine, that demanded its victims. The driver would not enter the pest-stricken houses. He remained in his cart, and shouted out, in a heart-tearing cry, to the inmates to bring their dead to him. As he drove up to our window he placed his hands around his mouth, as a hunter does in making a halloo, and cried: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

The long-wailed dolorous cry filled the streets, empty of their frequenters: "Bring out—bring out your dead!" Again at our home the cry was heard; and I saw my father and others lift up the coarse pine box, with the body of my little sister shut inside, carry it to the window, and toss it into the "dead wagon." And then the wagon rattled away down the street, and again, as it stopped under the window of the next house, over the doomed city rang the weird cry: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

A few days later another rough pine box was brought to our home. Again I did not understand it; but I knew more of the mystery of death than I had known before. Into this box they placed the body of my little sister Louise. Then we waited for the approach of the "dead wagon." I knew that it would again come to our home, to get its freight of death. I went to the window, and looked up and down the street, and waited. Far in the distance, I heard the cry: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

The wagon finally arrived. The window was thrown open, the rude box was lifted up, taken to the window, and thrown into the wagon, which was already loaded with similar boxes. They were in great haste, it seemed to me, to be rid of the poor little box. And the carter drove on down the street to other stricken homes, crying: "Bring out—bring out your dead!"

I now began to feel the loss of my sisters. Two had gone. Only one was left with me, my little sister Ellen, as frail and as lovely a flower as ever bloomed. When the next box came, and she, dead of the plague, was put into it, I thought it time for me to interfere. I went to the window and stood guard. Again came the terrible cry: "Bring out—bring out your dead!" And my last little sister was taken away in the "dead wagon."

I was too young to understand it all, but I remember going with my father and mother in the carriage every time they carried one of my sisters to the graveyard.

The next strange thing to happen was the arrival in the house of a box much larger than the others. I did not know what it could be for. The box was very rough looking. It was made of unplaned boards. My nurse told me it was for my mother. Again I took my stand by the window. "Bring out—bring out your dead!" resounded mournfully in the street just below the window where I stood. I looked out, and there was the "dead wagon." It had come for my mother.

I was astonished to find that they did not throw the box containing my mother into the wagon. It was too large and heavy. Four or five men had to come into the house and take out the box. It was marked "To the Train Vaults," and was put into the wagon with the other boxes containing dead bodies. Only my father and I sat in the carriage that went to the cemetery and to the vaults that day. There were my mother and my three little sisters; all had been swept from me in this St. Pierre style—in this volcano of yellow fever.

Finally there came one day a letter from my grandmother, the wife of the old Methodist itinerant preacher of Waltham: "Send on some one of the family, before they are all dead. Send George." And so my father made preparations to send me back to Massachusetts. I can remember now the exact wording of the card he wrote and pinned on my coat, just like the label or tag on a bag of coffee. It read:

"This is my little son George Francis Train. Four years old. Consigned on board the ship Henry to John Clarke, Jr., Dock Square, Boston; to be sent to his Grandmother Pickering, at Waltham, ten miles from Boston. Take good care of the Little Fellow, as he is the only one left of eleven of us in the house, including the servants [slaves]. I will come on as soon as I can arrange my Business."

I remember how we went down to the ship in the river. She lay out in the broad, muddy Mississippi, and seven other vessels lay between her and the shore. Planks were laid on the bank, or "levee," as they called the shore in New Orleans, and up to the side of the nearest ship. We climbed over these planks and passed over the seven vessels, and came to the Henry. My father kissed me good-by, and left me on board the ship.

There I was, aboard this great vessel—for so she seemed to me then—a little boy, without nurse or guardian to look after me. I was just so much freight. I was part of the cargo. We floated down the Mississippi slowly, and floated on and on toward the Gulf. We were floating out into the great waters, into the great world, floating through the waters of Gulf and ocean, floating along in the Gulf Stream, and floating on toward my Northern home.

Thus I was floating, when I began my life anew; and I have been floating for seventy years!

When my father said good-by to me, kissing me as we passed over the last of the seven ships between the Henry and the shore, I saw him put a handkerchief to his face, as if to hide from me the tears that were in his eyes. He feared that my little heart would break down under the strain. But I didn't cry. Everything was so new to me. I was too small to realize all that the parting meant and all that had led up to it. I could not feel that I was leaving behind me all the members of my family—in the vaults of the graveyard. The ship seemed a new world to me. I had no eyes for tears—only for wonderment.

For many years afterward I heard nothing of my father. He had dropped below the horizon when I floated down the Mississippi, and I saw and heard nothing more of him. As my mother and three sisters had been buried together in New Orleans, we had taken it for granted that father had followed them to the grave, a victim of the same pestilence. But nothing was known as to this for many years.

We were anxious to have all the bodies brought together in one graveyard in the North and buried side by side. The family burying-ground was at Waltham, where eight generations were then sleeping—that is, eight generations of Pickerings and Bemises. There were the bodies of my great-grandmother, and of ancestors belonging to the first Colonial days. My cousin, George Pickering Bemis, Mayor of Omaha, afterward had a monument erected over the spot where so many Bemises and Pickerings lay in their long rest, to preserve their memory. But my father's body was never to rest there; nor was it ever seen by any of his relatives.

My uncle, John Clarke, Jr., who had brought me out of New Orleans and rescued me from the plague, tried to find some trace of my father; but no record or vestige of him could be found in that city. Every trace of him had been swept away. His very existence there had been forgotten, erased. No one could be found who had ever heard of him, or knew anything about his store. So completely had the pestilence done its terrible work of destruction and obliteration. As this period was prior to the invention of the daguerreotype, we had no photographs of him. The only likenesses that were made then were expensive miniatures on ivory. I have no picture of him, except the one I carry forever in my memory.

Sixty years passed away. One day I received a letter from one of my cousins, Louisa Train, who was living in Michigan. She told me that her father and mother had died, and that the furniture of the old house, in which they and her grandparents had lived, had fallen to her. "In moving an old bureau," she wrote, "it fell to pieces, and, to my surprise, two documents rolled upon the floor. These papers relate to you. One of them was a letter from your father to his mother, written from New Orleans shortly before you left that city. In it he says:

"'You can imagine my loneliness in being in this great house, always so lively, with eleven persons in it, including my own family—now all alone. George is with his tutor. He is a very extraordinary boy, though only four years old. The other day he repeated some verses, of which I can remember these lines:

"'I am monarch of all I survey; My right there is none to dispute; From the center all round to the sea, I am lord of the fowl and the brute.'"

I was to receive one other message from my father. Since I began writing this autobiography, my aged aunt, Abigail Pickering Frost, now in her ninetieth year, discovered a letter that my father had written to her and to her sister, my aunt Alice, who afterward married Henry A. Winslow, upon the day that he placed me on the ship Henry, and sent me to my grandmother at Waltham, Mass. Aunt Abigail, after the death of aunt Alice, who was one of the victims in the wreck of the Lexington, in January, '40, hid the letter in the garret of the old Waltham farmhouse, where she later discovered it. She now sends it to me from her home in Omaha, Neb., where it had again been lost, and found after a long search, as she knew that I would appreciate it as a part of my life-story.

The letter came to me as a wail from the dead. I was very young, and childish, and thoughtless when I parted from him forever; but his letter brought back to me in a flood the bitterness of our life in New Orleans, the loneliness of my father in his great grief, and made me suffer, nearly seventy years afterward, for the pain that I was then too young to understand or feel. I give this letter, which is inexpressibly dear to me, just as it was written.

"New Orleans, June 10th, 1833.

"Dear Sisters Abigail and Alice:

"'Tis just two years since I left this place for New York, and arrived in Boston the evening of the 3d of July. I hope my dear boy will arrive safe and pass the 4th of July with you. He is now on board the ship (and the steamboat alongside the ship) to the Balize. I have written several letters by the ship, and found I had a few moments to spare which I will improve by addressing you. I refer you to the letters to Mother Pickering for particulars—as I have not time to say much. I can only say, my dear girls, that I am very unhappy here for reasons you well know. I part with George as though I was parting with my right eye—but 'tis for his good and the happiness of all that he should go; take him to your own home, care, and protection; he is no ordinary boy, but is destined for a great scholar.

"I am left here without a friend except my God! in a city where the cholera is raging to a great extent—100 are dying daily! and among them some of the most valuable citizens. A sweet little girl about the age of Ellen, and an intimate acquaintance of George's, who used to walk arm in arm with him, died this morning with the cholera, and a great number of others among our most intimate acquaintances have passed on. Mrs. Simons died in six hours! What is life worth to me? Oh, my dear sisters! could I leave this dreadful place I would, and die among my friends! The thoughts of my dear Maria and Ellen fill me with sorrow! I have mourned over their tombs in silence. I have been with them in my dreams, and frequently I meet them in my room and talk with them as though alive. All here is melancholy. When shall I see you, God only knows! I have relieved my heavy heart of a burden—a weight that was almost unsupportable.

"In parting with my lovely boy I have bequeathed him to Mother Pickering as a legacy—it being all that I possess! You will take a share of the care, and I know will be all that mothers could be for your dear sister Maria's sake!

"Give my love to Grandpa Bemis, Father Pickering, and all the rest of the family. Say to them that my mind is constantly with them, and will ever be so. I have written in great haste and very badly, as I am on board the ship and all is confusion, with the steamboat alongside. Farewell, my dear sisters! Do write me a line. If you knew how much I prize a letter from you, you would write often. Adieu, and believe me your affectionate brother,

"Oliver Train.

"To Misses Abigail and Alice Pickering,

Waltham, Mass."

The other document mentioned by my cousin Louisa, was the deed of a farm by my paternal grandfather, making a certain physician trustee of the property. I never came into that property! This was my first bequest. I had begun, even in my infancy, to give away my property, and I have thrown it away ever since. This first "bequest," however, was none of my making, although I accepted it, without trying to question the matter.

Another involuntary "bequest" of my childhood was brought about in this way. My mother, when a girl, was engaged to marry Stebbins Fiske. It was by a mere chance that they were not married—and therefore my name is "Train" by a mere accident which changed the fate of my mother and her fiancé. My father was a warm friend of Stebbins Fiske, and when Fiske was called suddenly to New Orleans, just before the day set for the marriage, he left his betrothed, Maria Pickering, in charge of my father. The result might have been foreseen. It is the common theme of romance the world over. My mother and my father fell in love with each other, and were married. There was no thought of unfaithfulness; it was merely inevitable. Fiske understood the situation, and forgave both of them, and continued the stanch friend of both.

In his will Fiske left a small sum—$5,000—to my mother's mother. It was the most delicate way in which he could leave some of his money so that his old sweetheart might get it. The terms of the will were that this money should be divided at my grandmother's death. It was so divided, and a certain portion of it should have come to me; but I never received a penny. This was my second bequest, for I allowed others to take freely what belonged to me.

My third bequest was made with my eyes open. When I was about starting for Australia in '53, another uncle-in-law, George W. Frost, whom I afterward appointed purchasing agent of the Union Pacific Railway, a splendid gentleman and a clergyman, came to me and said: "Your Aunt Abbie" (his wife) "and myself are going to take care of your old grandmother on the farm. Have you any objections to signing away your interest in the old place?"

I said that, of course, I would sign it away. I was all right. I was going out into the great world to make fortunes. And I signed it away, as if it were a mere nothing.

These incidents I mention here as illustrations of my whole life. Since my fourth year I have given away—thrown away—money. I have made others rich. But I have never yet got what was due me from others.