CHAPTER VIII PURITAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT THE two sisters had been released on bail. But the pub- licity which their imprisonment had occasioned was by no means ended. A new arrest was the next sensation. The arm of the law now gestured toward that eccentric fellow, George Francis Train. Through his association with the woman's movement he had known the sisters for some time; and Mrs. Woodhull wrote that he, immediately on their arrest, "like a true knight errant flew to our side as a champion." This knight errant was one of the extraordinary figures of his day. He was a man of great ability. At the age of twenty, he had attained a notable position in the ship- ping business, at a salary of $10,000 a year -- a considerable figure in 1849. He created a fleet of forty sailing ships. He acquired 5,000 lots in Omaha, said to have been worth $30,000,000. He introduced street railways into Europe. He projected the Union Pacific Railway, and organized the Crédit Mobilier to finance it -- though he was not impli- cated in the scandals with which that gigantic venture was tainted. In 1872, he was a man of forty-three, possessed of considerable wealth, with a famous show place at Newport. Handsome, with a magnetic personality, he might have carried everything before him. Having paid a visit to France during the Second Empire, he had been on cordial -108- |