remarked that I presumed I did; but I could not help it, and I hoped she was not disappointed at my appearance.
“Oh, no,” she said; “I suppose I have no right to be disappointed, but I have read and heard so much about you and your Museum that I was quite prepared to be astonished.”
I asked her if she had been through the establishment.
“I have,” she replied; “I came in immediately after breakfast; I have been here ever since, and, I can say I think with the Queen of Sheba, that ‘the half had not been told me.’ But, Mr. Barnum,” she, continued, “I have long felt a desire to see you; I wanted to attend when you lectured on temperance in Portland, but I had a severe cold and could not go out.”
“Do you like my collection as well as you do the one in the Boston Museum?” I asked.
“Dear me! Mr. Barnum,” said she, “I never went to any Museum before, nor to any place of amusement or public entertainment, excepting our school exhibitions; and I have sometimes felt that they even may be wicked, for some parts of the dialogues seemed frivolous; but I have heard so much of your ‘moral drama’ and the great good you are doing for the rising generation that I thought I must come here and see for myself.”
“We represent the pathetic story of ‘Charlotte Temple’ in the Lecture Room to-day,” I remarked, with an inward chuckle at the peculiarities of my singular visitor, who, although she was nearly fifty years of age, had probably never been in an audience of a hundred persons, unless it might be at a school exhibition, or in Sunday school, or in church.
“Indeed! I am quite familiar with the sad history of Miss Temple, and I think I can derive great consolation from witnessing the representation of the touching story.”
At this moment the gong sounded to announce the opening of the Lecture Room, and the crowd passed on in haste to secure seats. My spinster visitor sprang to her feet and anxiously inquired:
“Are the services about to commence?”
“Yes,” I replied, “the congregation is now going up.”
She marched along with the crowd as demurely as if she was going to a funeral. After she was seated, I watched her, and in the course of the play I noticed that she was several times so much overcome as to be moved to tears. She was very much affected, and when the “services” were over, without seeking another interview with me, she went silently and tearfully away.
One day, two city boys who had thoroughly explored the wonders of the Museum, on their way out passed the open door of my private office, and seeing me sitting there, one of them exclaimed to his companion:
“There! That’s Mr. Barnum.”
“No! is it?” asked the other, and then with his mind full of the glories of the stuffed gander-skins, and other wealth which had been displayed to his wondering eyes in the establishment, he summed up his views of the vastness and value of the whole collection, and its fortunate proprietor in a single sentence:
“Well, he’s an awful rich old cuss, ain’t he!”
Those boys evidently took a strictly financial view of the establishment.
CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER SUCCESSFUL SPECULATION.
PEALE’S MUSEUM—MYSTERIOUS MESMERISM—YANKEE HILL—HENRY BENNETT—THE RIVAL MUSEUMS—THE ORPHEAN AND ORPHAN FAMILIES—THE FUDGEE MERMAID—BUYING OUT MY RIVAL—RUNNING OPPOSITION TO MYSELF—ABOLISHING THEATRICAL NUISANCES—NO CHECKS AND NO BAR—THE MUSEUM MY MANIA—MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES S. STRATTON—GENERAL TOM THUMB IN NEW YORK—RE-ENGAGEMENT—AN APT PUPIL—FREE FROM DEBT—THE PROFITS OF TWO YEARS—IN SEARCH OF A NEW FIELD—STARTING FOR LIVERPOOL—THE GOOD SHIP “YORKSHIRE”—MY PARTY—ESCORT TO SANDY HOOK—THE VOYAGE—A TOBACCO TRICK—A BRAGGING JOHN BULL OUTWITTED—ARRIVAL AT LIVERPOOL—A GENTLEMAN BEGGAR—MADAME CELESTE—CHEAP DWARFS—TWO-PENNY SHOWS—EXHIBITION OF GENERAL TOM THUMB IN LIVERPOOL—FIRST-CLASS ENGAGEMENT FOR LONDON.
The president and directors of the “New York Museum Company” not only failed to buy the American Museum as they confidently expected to do, but, after my newspaper squib war and my purchase of the Museum, they found it utterly impossible to sell their stock. By some arrangement, the particulars of which I do not remember, if, indeed, I ever cared to know them, Mr. Peale was conducting Peale’s Museum which he claimed was a more “scientific” establishment than mine, and he pretended to appeal to a higher class of patrons. Mesmerism was one of his scientific attractions, and he had a subject upon whom he operated at times with the greatest seeming success, and fairly astonished his audiences. But there were times when the subject was wholly unimpressible and then those who had paid their money to see the woman put into the mesmeric state cried out “humbug,” and the reputation of the establishment seriously suffered.
It devolved upon me to open a rival mesmeric performance, and accordingly I engaged a bright little girl who was exceedingly susceptible to such mesmeric influences as I could induce. That is, she learned her lesson thoroughly, and when I had apparently put her to sleep with a few passes and stood behind her, she seemed to be duly “impressed” as I desired; raised her hands as I willed; fell from her chair to the floor; and if I put candy or tobacco into my mouth, she was duly delighted or disgusted. She never failed in these routine performances. Strange to say, believers in mesmerism used to witness her performances with the greatest pleasure and adduce them as positive proofs that there was something in mesmerism, and they applauded tremendously—up to a certain point.
That point was reached, when leaving the girl “asleep,” I called up some one in the audience, promising to put him “in the same state” within five minutes, or forfeit fifty dollars. Of course, all my “passes” would not put any man in the mesmeric state; at the end of three minutes he was as wide awake as ever.
“Never mind,” I would say, looking at my watch; “I have two minutes more, and meantime, to show that a person in this state is utterly insensible to pain, I propose to cut off one of the fingers of the little girl who is still asleep.” I would then take out my knife and feel of the edge, and when I turned around to the girl whom I left on the chair she had fled behind the scenes to the intense amusement of the greater part of the audience and to the amazement of the mesmerists who were present.
“Why! where’s my little girl?” I asked with feigned astonishment.
“Oh! she ran away when you began to talk about cutting off fingers.”
“Then she was wide awake, was she?”
“Of course she was, all the time.”
“I suppose so; and, my dear sir, I promised that you should be ‘in the same state’ at the end of five minutes, and as I believe you are so, I do not forfeit fifty dollars.”
I kept up this performance for several weeks, till I quite killed Peale’s “genuine” mesmerism in the rival establishment. After Peale, “Yankee” Hill undertook the management of that Museum, but in a little while he failed. It was then let to Henry Bennett, who reduced the entrance price to one shilling,—a half price which led me to characterize his concern as “cheap and nasty,”—and he began a serious rivalry with my Museum. His main reliances were burlesques and
