I also urged that France should not yield an inch of her territory to the rapacious Prussians.

The excitement of the hour carried everything before it, and the crowd outside, numbering at least 20,000, finally was joined by the 6,000 inside, and the whole mass, making a grand and noisy procession, escorted me to my hotel where I had taken the entire front suite of apartments. The next morning I was waited upon by a committee of the revolutionists. They said they wanted a military leader, and that Cluseret was the man for the place. He would be able to lead the forces of the Ligue du Midi.

Cluseret was then in Switzerland, where he had taken refuge after the troops drove him out of Lyons at the orders of Gambetta. He was the Gustave Paul Cluseret who had taken part in our Civil War, serving on the staffs of McClellan and Frémont, and who later was Military Chief of the Paris Commune. We sent to Switzerland and invited General Cluseret to join us in Marseilles. To our surprise he sent word that he would need a force of 2,000 armed men! This settled Cluseret, as far as I was concerned.

A few days later a card was brought to me in the hotel bearing the name "Tirez," and the statement that M. Tirez occupied room 113 in the same hotel. I went up to this room, and there found a splendid-looking fellow with a great military mustache. "Are you M. Tirez?" I asked. "I am General Cluseret," he said. "I thought you wanted 2,000 armed men?" I said. "You can probably give me more than that number," he said, with a smile. "You seem to be in command of everything and everybody here." "We shall see," I said. I asked him to go to the Cirque with me that evening.

There were at least 10,000 men in this gigantic amphitheater. I made a short speech and said I wanted to give them a surprise. "You want a military leader. I have brought you one. Here is your leader—General Gustave Paul Cluseret." He was greeted with tremendous cheers.

We at once organized military headquarters and prepared to take possession of the city. In this effort we were aided by the liberal views of the préfet, M. Esquiros, a republican, and later by the incapacity of the new préfet appointed by Gambetta, M. Gent. The next day we marched to the military fortifications with a great mass of men. General Cluseret and I were arm in arm as we entered the gates. I observed the officer in charge of the guns at the entrance about to give an order, which I knew meant a volley that would sweep us into the next world. I sprang forward and seized the officer by the arm. "Come to see me at the hotel," I whispered in his ear. The order to fire was not given, and we filed into the fortifications and took possession in the name of the Commune—the "Red Republic."

The following day 150 of the Guarde Mobile came to the hotel and demanded General Cluseret. I told the officers he was not present, but they insisted upon invading my rooms. I then told them that they would not be permitted to cross the threshold alive. I was armed with a revolver, and three of my own secretaries were armed in the same way. I said to the chief officer at the door that there were four men inside and we would shoot any one who tried to enter; we thought we could kill at least two dozen of them. The Guarde held a short council outside, and I soon heard their military step resounding down the hall. They had given up the search for Cluseret.

The next morning I saw from my window an army marching down the street. I thought it was our army, and went out on the balcony and began shouting "Vive la République!" and "Vive la Commune!" with the people in the street; but there was an ominous silence in the ranks of the troops. They did not respond to these revolutionary sentiments. Then I saw the new préfet, M. Gent, Gambetta's man, in a carriage, with the army. Suddenly I heard a shot, and Gent dropped to the bottom of the vehicle. Some one had tried to kill him, but missed, and the préfet did not care to be conspicuous again.

The troops came to a halt directly in front of the hotel, and I saw that the officers were regarding with anger the flag of the Commune that floated from the balcony. Orders were given, and five men, a firing squad, stepped from the ranks and knelt, with their rifles in hand, ready to fire. I knew that it was their purpose to shoot me. I do not know why, but I felt that if the thing had to be, I should die in the most dramatic manner possible. There were two other flags on the balcony, the colors of France and America. I seized both of these, and wrapped them quickly about my body. Then I stepped forward, and knelt at the front of the balcony, in the same military posture as the soldiers below me. I then shouted to the officers in French:

"Fire, fire, you miserable cowards! Fire upon the flags of France and America wrapped around the body of an American citizen—if you have the courage!"

An order was spoken, too low for me to catch, but the kneeling soldiers dropped their rifles, and then rose, and rejoined the ranks. Another order was shouted along the line, and the troops marched on down the street and out of sight.

The attempted assassination of the préfet had an unexpected effect upon public opinion in Marseilles. It turned the mercurial Frenchman against the Commune. I advised General Cluseret to go at once to Paris. I even purchased a gold-laced uniform for him. His subsequent history, as military leader of the Commune in Paris, his capture, trial, release, and retirement to Switzerland, are well known.

At this time I believe the tide of war might have been turned in favor of France by some swift movement like those of which the mobile Boers made good use in South Africa, perhaps by an attack on the rear of the German armies. France was filled with German soldiers, but Germany was unguarded; and I believed then that a body of light horsemen, say, like the Algerians, might have created such a diversion by a rapid raid to the rear that it would have forced the Germans back to the Rhine, or even to Berlin. I was astonished by the tremendous amount of munitions of war, and by the masses of troops that were still available in the south of France. Leadership, and not troops, was what France lacked.

I left Marseilles for Lyons, after the troops tried to shoot me in the balcony of the hotel, and was accompanied by Cremieux, one of the leaders of the Ligue du Midi. As we left Marseilles, a man, wearing conspicuously the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, entered our compartment. I at once set him down as a spy, and began talking with Cremieux in a loud voice. My estimate of his character was justified in an unpleasant way at Lyons. No sooner had we entered the suburbs of that city than our friend left the compartment and got off the train.

When the train came to a stop in the station, I sprang out of the compartment with Cremieux, and was confronted by six bayonets. Both of us were placed under arrest. Immediately I remembered the little slip of paper in my pocket which might betray Cluseret, if found, and I seized it hastily and put it into my mouth. The officer of the squad of soldiers rushed forward to stop me, but it was too late. The slip had gone. I had swallowed it.

"That was the address of General Cluseret!" shouted the officer.

"Of course," said I. "And it has gone to a rendezvous with my breakfast!"

The soldiers took Cremieux and myself to the Bastile, in Lyons, and I was detained there for thirteen days. When I went into the cell I was very tired and sat up against the wall and leaned my head against it. In a moment I detected the breathing of a man very near me, and perceived a crack in the wall, against which a spy in the adjacent cell was inclining his ear to catch any incriminating words that might pass between Cremieux and myself. It was the old trick of the Inquisition; but it did not serve the purposes of these late players of it.

My secretary, Mr. Bemis, who came on from Marseilles by a later train, could not find me in Lyons. He spent a week in looking for me. At the end of that time my wife, who was in New York, telegraphed to the American legation at Paris asking if the report were true that I had been killed. It had been currently reported in America that the soldiers had shot me in Marseilles. Mr. Bemis went immediately to the Guarde Mobile, which was in sympathy with the Commune, the organization from which General Cluseret had been driven by Gambetta. The Guarde sent a deputation of 150 officers to the préfet of the city, who ordered my immediate release. Gambetta was appealed to, and he directed that I be sent to him at Tours by special train.

To Tours I went in style. I had been poisoned in the Lyons Bastile, and was ill, in consequence, having lost thirty pounds of flesh in thirteen days. I was met at Tours by Gambetta's secretary, M. Ranc, afterward a deputy, who told me I could see the Dictator at four o'clock. "Why not now?" I asked. "Because it is not possible for M. Gambetta to work until he has had his dinner." I found that these French officials were as fond of their dinner as English officials. At the appointed hour M. Ranc took me to the palace of the prefecture, and I was admitted at once to Gambetta's presence.

I found everything in confusion. The prefecture was filled with men who had been waiting for the Dictator's pleasure. In the first ante-rooms I saw men who had been waiting for three weeks; in the next rooms were those who had waited for two weeks; and in the third rooms I found officers of the army and navy, who had waited one week. As I passed in among these throngs with an air of self-possession, they took me for some grand personage, and I heard whispers that I must be the ambassador from Spain or the Papal Nuncio.

Gambetta was seated at his desk in a large and handsomely furnished room. He made not the slightest sign of being aware that I was present. He did not even turn his face toward me. I did not learn until afterward that the distinguished Italian-Frenchman had one glass eye, and could see me just as well at an angle as he could full-face. But I grew tired of standing there silent, and was already weary from my long incarceration. I decided, after taking in this strange character, then at the top of the seething pot of French politics, that the best course for me was to put on a bold front.

"When a distinguished stranger calls to see you, M. Gambetta, I think you might offer him a chair."

The great man smiled, and motioned me to a seat with considerable graciousness. I took a chair, and said:

"M. Gambetta, you are the head of France, and I intend to be President of the United States. You can assist me, and I can assist you."

He looked at me with a curious regard, but did not smile.

"Send me to America, and I can help you get munitions of war, and win over the sympathy and assistance of the Americans."

I knew, of course, that he was going to send me out of France in any event, and I wanted to discount his plan.

The Dictator smiled again, and said: "You sent Cluseret to Paris, and bought him a uniform for 300 francs."

"You are only fairly well informed, M. Gambetta. I paid 350 francs for the uniform."

"Cluseret is a scoundrel," he said.

"The Communards call you that," I replied.

He ended our interview by saying a few pleasant words, bowing me out of the room, and sending me out of France forthwith.

I went straight to London, then to Liverpool, and sailed for New York in the Abyssinia, which, curiously enough, was afterward the pioneer ship on the line of boats between Vancouver and Yokohama, it having been bought by the Canadian Pacific.

CHAPTER XXVI

Train Villa, George Francis Train's summer home in Newport from 1868 to 1872.

I had long wanted a handsome residence by the sea, and so, when I had nearly completed the work done in connection with the Union Pacific Railway, and there seemed to be ahead of me a period of comparative leisure, I projected this house. My plans were made before I was in the Dublin jail. My wife built the Villa, or began work on it, while I was still in the Marshalsea. The lot on which it stands embraced some two and a half acres in the most delightful region of Newport. In order that my boys might have an opportunity for sport at home, I had a building put up for billiards and bowling. This was, I believe, the first residence in Newport that had a special place of this kind, although of course, many had billiard tables. A fine cottage was also built for my father-in-law, Colonel George T. M. Davis. This cottage was sold recently for $50,000, to the Dolans of Philadelphia.

The Villa itself must have cost $100,000, but the truth is, I have never known how much money was lavished upon its building and adornment. I was called rich and had never, at any time, given a thought to the mere details of money. What I wanted I got. In those days that was the substance of my economic system in personal matters. We lived there in manorial style, entertaining so lavishly and freely that the Villa became a free guest-house for all Newport. I also recollect that my living cost me more than $2,000 a week. Now I manage to live on $3 a week in the Mills Hotel, or Palace, as I call it. Here I am more contented than I was at Newport. I seem to be saving $1,997 a week. We turned out, in Newport, six carriages when we went driving; but this was a display that I always set my heart against. It seemed to be mere wastefulness.

Since my occupancy, Train Villa, as it is called to this day, has been rented by some of the most prominent persons in the fashionable world. Among those who have lived in it are the Kernochans, the Kips, Governor Lippitt of Rhode Island, some of the Vanderbilts and the Mortimers. At the present time, it is occupied by George B. de Forest. It was formerly rented for $5,000 for three months or the season. It never paid us two per centum on its cost, and finally was sold by the trustee, Colonel Davis.

The Villa was once turned into a jail, although I was not the captive in that instance. In the famous Crédit Mobilier case, in '72-'73, a man, who was my guest at the time, was arrested, and, as the Crédit Mobilier men then in Newport could not give bail in the sum of $1,000,000, as demanded, an arrangement was made with the sheriff by which the Villa temporarily became a jail, where my guest was confined.

So full of confidence was I that I could be elected President in '72, that I telegraphed from San Francisco that I would reach Newport on a certain day, and wished arrangements made for a "Presidential" banquet. Although this banquet was not the end of the campaign, it was the last flourish of trumpets in my Presidential aspirations.

My political career in fact was brief. My intention was to have it extend through at least a Presidential term; but the people would not have it so. Prior to '69, '70, '71, and '72, I had taken no active part in politics, although I had been interested in various campaigns and in many great public questions of the day. I have already referred to the offer made to me by the revolutionists in Australia to make me their President. That was, perhaps, the first time that anything political ever entered my life. The offer was by no means a temptation to me and I refused to consider it, without a single poignant regret.

In '65, the Fenians, after I had espoused the general cause of the Irish, as of the oppressed of every country, asked me to attend their first convention, which was to be held in Philadelphia. They wished me to address them. This I did, but I took no active part in the work of the convention or of the faction. I had already attended the Democratic Convention in Louisville in '64, when I held a proxy from Nebraska, and had hoped to have General Dix nominated for President and Admiral Farragut for Vice-President, but I was not permitted to take my seat.

While I was in the Four Courts' Marshalsea, in Dublin, in '68, James Brooks, of the New York Express, sent word to me that the Democrats in convention were willing to nominate Salmon P. Chase if I would consent to take the second place on the ticket. This did not suit me at all, and I sent a despatch to Brooks that I would take the first place only, and that as Chase was my friend, he could take the second place. This put an end to the negotiations.

But the seed of ambition had been sown, even before this, and it germinated in the old Irish prison. As soon as I got out of that jail, I began my campaign for President of the United States, and in '69 started on a program that involved 1,000 addresses to 1,000 conventions. It seemed to me that, with the effect I had always had upon people in my speeches and in personal contact, and with the record of great achievements in behalf of the progress of the world, especially with regard to the development of this country, I should succeed. I supposed that a man with my record, and without a stain on my reputation or blemish in my character, would be received as a popular candidate.

I had not the slightest doubt that I should be elected; and, with this sublime self-confidence, threw myself into the campaign with an energy and fire that never before, perhaps, characterized a Presidential candidate. I went into the campaign as into a battle. I forced fighting at every point along the line, fiercely assailing Grant and his "nepotism," on the one hand, and Greeley, and the spirit of compromise and barter that I felt his nomination represented, on the other.

In the year '69 I had made twenty-eight speeches in California, and eighty on the Pacific coast. I also made a trip over the Union Pacific Railway, on the first train over that line, and made addresses at many places throughout the country. The following year, '70, I seriously set myself to the task of appealing to the people directly for support, and began a series of public addresses on the issues of the day. But this year's work was interrupted by my trip around the world in eighty days, which consumed the end of the year, from the 1st of August to Christmas.

In '71 I fought hard from January to December, making the total of my speeches to the people 800, and having spoken directly, up to that time, to something like 2,000,000 persons. Of course, my campaign was made on independent lines entirely. I was not the nominee nor the complaisant tool of any party or faction. I made my race as one who came from the bosom of the people, and who represented the highest interests of the people. It was just here that failure came. I thought I knew something of the people, and felt confident that they would prefer a man of independence, who had accomplished something for them, to a man who was a mere tool of his party, a distributor of patronage to his friends and relatives, or to one who was a mere stalking-horse. But I was mistaken. The people, as Barnum has said, love to be humbugged, and are quite ready to pay tribute to the political boss and spoilsman.

A remarkable feature of my campaign was that, instead of scattering money broadcast, to draw crowds or to win votes, I made a charge for admission to hear my addresses. I spoke to audiences that paid to hear me talk to them in my own behalf and in theirs. In three years of active work—with the interruption of my trip around the world in '70—I took in $90,000 in admission charges. In spite of these charges, I spoke to more people and had greater audiences to listen to me than any other speaker during that heated campaign.

There was another remarkable thing about my campaign. I possessed tremendous power over audiences. So long as I could reach them with my voice, or talk with them or shake hands with them, I could hold them; but the moment they got out of my reach they got away from me, and slipped back again to the sway of the political bosses.

I saw that my chance of getting the nomination was lost long before the assembling of the Liberal Republican Convention of '72 in Cincinnati. I was not astonished by the result of that convention, except that I did not expect the nomination of Greeley, which I considered as a piece of political treachery, a deliberately calculated movement in the interest of Grant. But I still felt, vainly, indeed, some hope that the people would see the futility of supporting Greeley, and of placing me at the head of the ticket.

I can recall now the scenes in the Convention Hall when Carl Schurz nominated Horace Greeley. Outside of some cheering on the part of those who were party to the trickery, the nomination was received with ominous stillness. Suddenly, from out of the gallery, near where I was seated, there came a thin, quavering, piercing voice, like the cry of a seer of the wilderness or a wandering Jeremiah: "Sold, by God, but the goods not delivered!"

The words sounded then like a pronouncement of doom; but it proved not to be so. The "deal" was carried out, and the "goods" were delivered. Grant was elected, and Greeley, betrayed, retired, a heart-broken man.

Before I close this chapter on the Presidency, I wish to record here one distinct service which I believe I rendered this city and the country during my campaign. It was I, and not the New York newspapers, that first exposed the so-called "Tweed Ring." I began the fight against this ring of corrupt politicians, single-handed, and kept it up for more than a year before any New York paper or any other journal took up the issue. The New York papers, in fact, refused to publish my speech exposing this gang of public plunderers, and it was published in the Lyons, N. Y., Republican on April 22, '71. The speech itself was made long before Tweed had been accused of misuse of public funds.

While I was on the platform, a voice asked me "Who is the ring?" I had been attacking the "ring" in every public utterance in New York. I replied: "Hoffman, Tweed, Sweeney, Fisk, and Gould." Later, in the same speech, I said: "Tweed and Sweeney are taxing you from head to foot, while their horses are living in palaces," and then, using, for effect, some of the methods of the French Commune, I cried: "To the lamp-post! All those in favor of hanging Tweed to a lamp-post, say aye!" There was a tremendous outburst of "ayes."

In other speeches I went into details and gave the sums of which the people of New York had been plundered, and the amounts that had been paid in bribes to obtain influence in stilling public suspicion, and to buy immunity from exposure and opportunity for further theft.

So my campaign for the Presidency was not entirely in vain. It was something that seemed unavoidable, toward which I seemed pressed by circumstance and fate; and I can rest in the consciousness that it accomplished some permanent good.

CHAPTER XXVII

That assertion, with what I soon did to establish its truth, got me into jail, with the result that six courts in succession—afraid to bring me to trial for "obscenity"—declared me a "lunatic," and prevented my enjoyment of property in Omaha, Nebraska, which is now worth millions of dollars.

From Wall Street I hurried to Ludlow Street Jail, where I found Victoria C. Woodhull and Tennie C. Claflin in a cell about eight by four feet. I was indignant that two women, who had merely published a current rumor, should be treated in this way, and took a piece of charcoal and wrote, on the newly whitewashed walls of the cell a couplet suggesting the baseness of this attack upon their reputations. It is sufficient to say here that public feeling was so aroused that these women were soon set free; but I got myself deeper and deeper into the toils of the courts.

George Francis Train with the children in Madison Square.

In order to prove that the publication was not obscene, if judged by Christian standards of purity, I published in my paper, called The Train Ligue, three columns of quotations from the Bible. Every verse I used was worse than anything published by these women. I was immediately arrested on a charge of "obscenity," and taken to the Tombs. I was never tried on this charge, but was kept in jail as a lunatic, and then dismissed, under the ban of declared lunacy, and have so remained for thirty years. Although the public pretended to be against me, it was very eager to buy the edition of my paper that gave these extracts from the Bible. The price of the paper rose from five cents a copy to twenty, forty, sixty cents, and even to one dollar. In a few days it was selling surreptitiously for two dollars a copy.

I was put in Tweed's cell, number 56, in "Murderers' Row," in the Tombs, where at that time were twenty-two men imprisoned under the charge of murder. I made the twenty-third inhabitant of that ghastly "Row." It is remarkable that not one of these men was hanged. All were either acquitted, or tried and sentenced and got off with varying terms of service.

It was not a select, but it was at least a famous, group of men in "Murderers' Row." Across the narrow hallway, just opposite my cell, was Edward S. Stokes, who had killed James Fisk, Jr. Next to me were John J. Scannell and Richard Croker, both of whom have been prominent in the city administration in later years. There was, also, the famous Sharkey, who might have got into worse trouble than any of us, but who escaped through the pluck and ingenuity of Maggie Jordan. Maggie happened to be about the same size as her lover, and changed clothes with him in the cell. The warden, one morning, found he had a woman in his cage instead of Sharkey. This was the last ever heard of Sharkey, so far as I know.

My chief purpose in jail was not to get out, but to be tried on the charge of obscenity. I had been arrested for that offense, and determined that I would be either acquitted or convicted. But I have never had a trial to this day. I do not believe that any court in the land would face the danger of trying to convict a man of publishing obscenity for quoting from the standard book on morality read throughout Christendom.

However this may be, I was offered a hundred avenues of escape from jail, every conceivable one, except the honest and straightforward one of a fair trial by jury. Men offered to bail me out; twice I was taken out on proceedings instituted by women; but I would not avail myself of this way to freedom. Several times I was left alone in the court-house or in hallways, or other places, where access to the street was easy, entirely without guards, in the vain hope that I would walk off with my liberty. I was discharged by the courts; and I was offered freedom if I would sign certain papers that were brought to me, but I invariably refused to look at them. In all cases I merely turned back and took my place in the cell, and waited for justice.

In '73 I was finally taken before Judge Davis in the Court of Oyer and Terminer. William F. Howe, who died this year, was one of my counsel, and Clark Bell was another. Howe took the ground, first, that obviously there could be nothing obscene in the publication of extracts from the Bible, and, second, if there were, that I was insane at the time of the publication. The judge hastily said that he would instruct the jury to acquit me if the defense took this position. Mr. Bell then asked that a simple verdict of "not guilty" be rendered; but the judge insisted upon its form being "Not guilty, on the ground of insanity." This verdict was taken.

I rose immediately, and said: "I protest against this whole proceeding. I have been four months in jail; and I have had no trial for the offense with which I am charged." I felt that I was in the same plight as Paul. The Bible and the Church, surely, could not condemn me for quoting Scripture; and I had appealed unto Cæsar; but Cæsar refused, out of sheer cowardice, to hear me and try me. I was not even listened to when I made this protest, and I shouted, so that all must hear me: "Your honor, I move your impeachment in the name of the people!"

The sensation was tremendous. "Sit down!" roared the judge. He evidently thought that I would attack him. An order committing me to the State Lunatic Asylum was issued, and I was taken back to the Tombs. But I did not go to the asylum. Another writ of habeas corpus took me out of jail, and I at last turned my back on the Tombs—a lunatic by judicial decree. I hope that the courts, inasmuch as I am their ward, and have been for thirty years, have protected me in my rights, and have safeguarded those interests in Omaha where some millions of dollars depend upon the question of my sanity.

The moment I was taken out of the Tombs, I went down town, had a bath, got a good meal, put on better clothes, and bought passage for England. I went to join my family at Homburg, as my sons were then in Germany, studying at Frankfort.

This Woodhull-Claflin affair had far-reaching effects. Besides leaving me for thirty years in the grip of the court, it affected many other persons. I shall refer here only to one of these, the publisher of a newspaper in Toledo, who printed some of the matter that I had printed in New York. He was prosecuted, and his paper and press were seized. The poor fellow asked me to lecture in his interest. I could not do this, but helped him to raise some money to buy a new printing-press. This was in August, '83, when I was at Vevay, Switzerland.

A worthless piece of paper eventually fell into the hands of another man, who proceeded to prosecute me, and, with the assistance of the courts, kept me in the Charles Street Jail, Boston, for some time. I was arrested for this old debt of another man, and was refused the constitutional relief of habeas corpus by Judge Devins and five other judges of Massachusetts. The amount of the debt had steadily increased, and was $800 in '89. Finally, I went before Judge McKim, and he at once dismissed the case as groundless.

This brought my jail experiences to a close. Was it fitting that Boston, where I had lived and worked; where I had devised the building of the greatest ships the world had known up to that time; where I had projected and organized the clipper-ship service to California, and opened a new era in the carrying trade of the world, and where I had organized the Union Pacific Railway to develop the entire West and draw continents nearer together, should put me in jail for a petty debt that I did not owe, as in some sort an evidence of its gratitude?

My prison experience has been more varied than that of the most confirmed and hardened criminal; and yet I have never committed a crime, cheated a human being, or told a lie. I have been imprisoned in almost every sort of jail that man has devised. I have been in police stations, in Marshalseas in England and in Ireland, in common jails in Boston, in the Bastile of Lyons, in the Prefecture at Tours as the prisoner of Gambetta, Dictator of France, and in the famous old Tombs of New York. I have used prisons well. They have been as schools to me, where I have reflected, and learned more about myself—and a man's own self is the best object of any one's study. I have, also, made jails the source of fruitful ideas, and from them have launched many of my most startling and useful projects and innovations. And so they have not been jails to me, any more than they were to Lovelace:

CHAPTER XXVIII

I have always been something of a traveler, restless in my earlier years, and never averse to visiting new scenes and experiencing new sensations. In Australasia I had improved every opportunity to see the new world of the South Seas, and later had visited every part of the Orient that I could by any possibility reach during my various journeys in that portion of the globe. Europe I had traversed quite thoroughly, from the Crimea to Nijnii Novgorod, from the Volga to the Thames, from Spain to Finland. When I left Australia it was my intention to establish a great business in Yokohama, and, when that had been done, I intended to pass on across the Pacific, thus girdling the globe; but my first effort to go around the world was prevented by the war in the Crimea, and so I turned back and came home, as already described, by way of China, India, Egypt, and Europe.

The desire for travel possessed me mightily in '69, just after the golden spike was driven at the completion of the Union Pacific Railway, by which California and New York were made nearer one another by many days of travel. The circumference of the globe had been shrunken. I wanted, naturally, to be the first man to utilize the great advantage thus given to travel by making the quickest trip around the world.

After closing my lecture tour on the Pacific coast in the spring and summer of '70, I prepared for such a trip, carefully calculating that it could be made within eighty days, even with the inevitable losses due to bad connections at different ports. I wanted to take my sons, George and Elsey, with me, but, at the last moment, they were prevented from going. I found out only a few days ago, when accusing my daughter Sue of keeping them in Newport, that their mother had given them ten golden eagles each not to go. I sailed from San Francisco August 1, '70. On the same ship was Susan B. King, whom I found in San Francisco waiting to sail, as she was tired of the way her affairs were going in New York and wanted a long trip for rest and recreation. She had $30,000 with her, which she said she would try to invest profitably on the voyage. She was then quite an old woman, as the world generally estimates age.

I made Yokohama in very good time, and went immediately to the Japanese capital, the new seat of the Emperor, Tokyo. I may record here a very curious thing. I believe I was the last man—the last foreigner, at least—who had taken part in an old national custom of Japan, by which persons of opposite sex bathe together, without bathing suits. It was then considered, in that land of good morals and fine esthetic sense, that no impropriety was involved in this custom. Manners and customs there were open and free as in Greece, when Athens was "the eye of Greece" and the center of the world's civilization. I went to one of the public baths to experience a decidedly new sensation. I was allowed to bathe with old men and women, young men and maidens—and no one, except, perhaps, myself, felt any degree of embarrassment or false modesty.

But the fact that a foreigner was bathing in this way with Japanese women and girls made something of a stir in Tokyo that had been unexpected by me. It seems that, a short time before, some Englishmen had gone into one of the public baths and made themselves very offensive. This had taught the Japanese that they could not trust the foreigner, and they had already nearly decided to exclude foreigners from their baths, or to separate the sexes. My experience was, therefore, the last, as I believe. After this the sexes were not permitted to bathe together.

I observed that the Japanese used small paper packages for tea, thus making it convenient to handle tea. I then recalled the custom of the Chinese in compressing tea for transportation by caravan to the great Fair of Nijnii Novgorod. Here was an opportunity, I thought, and I suggested to Susan B. King that she might invest her $30,000 to good purpose in sending to New York a cargo of tea put up in little paper packages, and that, if she wanted to try it, I would give her letters to men in Canton who could arrange the matter for her. She undertook the scheme, and I wrote a description of it for Anglin's Gazette, in Yokohama. The tea was shipped to New York, and was handled at the Demorest headquarters. The tea was in half-pound and pound packages. This was long before Sir Thomas Lipton employed this method of putting up teas.

At Saigon, in French Cochin-China, I met the United States ship Alaska; and from that port sailed on a ship of the Messagerie Imperiale line for Marseilles. The remainder of the voyage was uneventful, except for the diversion just before we left Singapore of hearing the news of the fall of the Second Empire, the defeat of Louis Napoleon at Sedan, and the establishment of the republic.

I have already recorded, in the chapter on the Commune in France, my arrival at Marseilles and my experiences in the brief period of my visit. After I had been arrested and liberated, and had had my interview with Gambetta at Tours, I passed on rapidly to New York, and finished my tour of the world inside of eighty days.

My second trip was made in the year '90. I planned it while I was in jail in Boston for a debt that I did not contract. There had been some note-worthy efforts on the part of newspaper writers to make a record-breaking trip, and Miss Bisland had gone around in seventy-eight days, while Nellie Bly had succeeded in making the voyage in seventy-three days. I proposed to Col. John A. Cockerill, of the New York World, who had sent Nellie Bly on her trip, to make the circuit in less time; but he did not care to upset the World's own record. I then telegraphed to Radebaugh, proprietor of the Tacoma Ledger, that if he would raise $1,000 for a lecture in Tacoma, I would make a trip around the world in less than seventy days. He told me to come on.

As I started West, to sail on the Abyssinia, I received message after message from Radebaugh. Instead of the $1,000 I had asked for, $1,500 had been subscribed by the time I reached Chicago, and at St. Paul it had gone up to $3,500. I soon reached Tacoma, and lectured there to an immense audience, taking in $4,200, the largest amount ever paid for a single lecture—and sailed out into the Pacific March 18th. I was accompanied by S. W. Wall, editor of the Ledger. Lafcadio Hearn, the distinguished writer, was on the same ship, on his way to Japan. He was so ill that he did not leave his state-room during the voyage.

We made Yokohama in sixteen days, and the moment I landed I telegraphed to the American legation at Tokyo to get me a passport. It had always taken three days to get a passport, but I said that I must have this at once, and I got it. In seven hours I was on the way to Kobe, overland, three hundred miles across Japan. I caught the German ship for Nagasaki, from which point, after a short delay, I sailed for Hongkong. In a trip of this kind, of course, one sees little of interest. It is a mere question of rushing from vessel to vessel the moment you get into port, or of catching trains, or of chartering boats to bridge gaps, or of haggling with ship-captains or railway managers about getting extra accommodations at very extra prices.

My longest delay was at Singapore, where I lost forty hours. The next longest loss of time was in New York—wonderful to relate—where I was delayed thirty-six hours, although four railways were competing for the honor of taking me across the continent on a record-breaking journey. I arrived on Saturday, and had to charter a special car—which cost $1,500—and could not get away until Monday morning. I was near being delayed a day at Calais, France, but succeeded in chartering a boat to take me over the Channel. As this boat carried the British mails, I was relieved of the expense by the British Government.

At Portland I met with a most annoying delay of five hours, due entirely to mismanagement. This most unexpectedly lengthened out my tour at the very end, and so angered me that I refused to attend a banquet the people had prepared for me. I pushed on to Tacoma as soon as I could get anything to carry me, and arrived there exactly sixty-seven days, thirteen hours, two minutes, and fifty-five seconds from the time I had started. The actual time of traveling was fifty-nine days and seven hours. Seven days and five hours had been lost. This was then the fastest trip around the world. It has been beaten since by myself.

As I had started on my second trip from a Pacific coast point, there was a good deal of rivalry among the growing towns in that section with regard to the honor of being the starting-point of my third trip in '92, in which I eclipsed all previous records. I had already announced that this could readily be done, as the Pacific steamships were very much faster than they had been at the time of my former voyage, and as the connections at various ports were much better. Sir William Van Horne had also written that he wanted me to make another tour of the world, using one of the fast ships of the Canadian Pacific road, the famous Empresses, that soon would be put on the line to Yokohama. The new town of Whatcom, on Puget Sound, in the extreme northwest of Washington, raised the amount necessary for the trip, and I made my start from that point, catching the Empress of India from Vancouver.

An account of this voyage would necessarily be only a panoramic glance at a narrow line around the world. I made Yokohama in eleven days, was at Kobe, Japan, in thirteen, and at Shanghai in fifteen. Here I had some difficulty in finding a fast steamer for Singapore, but succeeded in getting aboard a swift German boat, the Friga, which put me in Singapore in time to catch the Moyune, the last of the fast tea ships, and on her I sailed as far as Port Said, through the Suez Canal. At Port Said I boarded the Ismaila for Brindisi, Italy. Then I again rushed across Europe, and caught the Majestic at Liverpool for New York. I found a distinguished company on board, including Ambassador John Hay, D. O. Mills, Lady Stewart, Mrs. Paran Stevens, and Senator Spooner.