OCR Text |
Show BBhL 1 'm m bKI&kI 9 GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN. K8 ffl$i m ' At first the admiration then the pity of all men HmUffiil 8 1 familiar with him, George Francis Train has Anally BBfflSniri 8 found rest. His career was a strange one, mar- BB8l&Mi 8 velous in many ways; and his life should be a HSffiljl 8 1 serious study to all men who investigate brain BBBmBh 8r diseases. It seems reasonably clear that he was BFn8PH 8 never sound of mind. He was in his youth and Bs 8111 8 early manhood too bright for a level-headed man. BaB JUS'S 8 He was always rea&y to try what, to calmer minds, BK fflf D 8' was tne imPsslule. He had more than the intui- B 'ffl flh tive genius; he had ideality enough for a great BB WM m poet, but his ambition and vanity were both so B8 fnH 1' abnormal, that his dream was to become the great B8 WvK m master of one or a dozen industrial enterprises B8 siwt m and so ne scoffed at opposition. He held that B8 P'll fi tllG building of a continental railroad was both B8 mlm 8 simple and easy. If one mile of road could be BFb ttfl m laid weat of Omaha, it would not be very much BflB Jill 8 to add anotlier rnile, and it was merely a matter BBbBMP 8 of labor an(1 money to add a thousand or two BmSP 8 thousand miles more. He liked the work; he felt Bgf $ m that it was giving man dominion over a conti- BB hm M nent, and he wanted to make the work as dramatic BBsi'is hi as possible. He looked on the locomotive as at RBly B once his agent and his evangel to join its scream 881 IP! B with the eaSlG's an(1 a black new John to Hp am proclaim throughout the wilderness the coming BaBf li S civilization. He built some street railways and B8'l m ml' seeing their possibilities, he repaired to England B88flk H wM and ma P6n war upon the stubborn inertia HifiiiH $1 ' which resisted any change. The speeches he BBfiSfftffiN '"M BhBBHI made there to arouse the people were wonderful. Once in Manchester he was appealing to his audience audi-ence to shake out their manhood and be real men, telling them it was their duty to think and to act for themselves, and as a climax shot at them this sentence: "You are all loyal subjects of the noblest no-blest sovereign on earth, but if your gracious Queen (all honor to her) happens to sit down on a pin, bent in a way to produce the most immediate im-mediate results, does she not as suddenly stand up as would her humblest subject under a like incentive?" He got his road. But when the sun of his life reached its meridian, merid-ian, and his vital physical forces began to fail, then the clouds "began to return after every rain, the keeper of the house began to tremble and the strong man to bow himself," and the world began be-gan to say that Train was not quite himself any more. The supernatural brightness was going in eclipse. His was a long decline. As age drew on ho became more gentle and considerate; his love for the helpless expanded more and more as his distrust dis-trust of men increased and so in silence, nursing impossible dreams, he waited for the change that came on Tuesday last. His was not a death to be deplored; it is a comfort to think that the final dreamless sleep has come to him. |