E-text prepared by Julia Miller, Pat McCoy, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from images generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries (http://www.archive.org/details/americana) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 38265-h.htm or 38265-h.zip: (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38265/pg38265-images.html) or (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38265/38265-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive/American Libraries. See http://www.archive.org/details/mylifemanystates00trairich [Illustration: George Francis Train. From a recent photograph.] MY LIFE IN MANY STATES AND IN FOREIGN LANDS Dictated in My Seventy-Fourth Year by GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN Illustrated [Illustration] New York D. Appleton and Company 1902 Copyright, 1902 by D. Appleton and Company Published November, 1902 MY LIFE IN MANY STATES AND IN FOREIGN LANDS TO THE CHILDREN AND TO THE CHILDREN'S CHILDREN IN THIS AND IN ALL LANDS WHO LOVE AND BELIEVE IN ME BECAUSE THEY KNOW I LOVE AND BELIEVE IN THEM PREFACE I have been silent for thirty years. During that long period I have taken little part in the public life of the world, have written nothing beyond occasional letters and newspaper articles, and have conversed with few persons, except children in parks and streets. I have found children always sympathetic and appreciative. For this reason I have readily entered into their play and their more serious moods; and for this reason, also, have dedicated this book to them and to their children. For many years I have been a silent recluse, remote from the world in my little corner in the Mills Hotel, thinking and waiting patiently. That I break this silence now, after so many years, is due to the suggestion of a friend who has told me that the world of to-day, as well as the world of to-morrow, will be interested in reading my story. I am assured that many of the things I have accomplished will endure as a memorial of me, and that I ought to give some account of them and of myself. And so I have tried to compress a story of my life into this book. With modesty, I may say that the whole story could not be told in a single volume. I have tried not to be prolix, keeping in mind while preparing this record of events, "all of which I saw, and part of which I was," that there is a limit to the patience of readers.