Struggles and Triumphs - P. T. Barnum (top 20 books to read txt) 📗

to start another Museum, and men of capital offered to raise a million of dollars if necessary, for that purpose, provided I would undertake its management. My constant reply was, “lead me not into temptation.” I felt that I had enough to live on, and I earnestly believed the doctrine laid down in my lecture on “Money Getting,” in regard to the danger of leaving too much property to children.

As I now had something like real leisure at my disposal, in the summer of 1868 I made my third visit to the White Mountains. To me, the locality and scene are ever fresh and ever wonderful. From the top of Mount Washington, one can see on every side within a radius of forty miles peaks piled on peaks, with smiling valleys here and there between, and, on a very clear day, the Atlantic Ocean off Portland, Maine, is distinctly visible⁠—sixty miles away. Beauty, grandeur, sublimity, and the satisfaction of almost every sense combine to remind one of the ejaculation of that devout English soul who exclaims: “Look around with pleasure, and upward with gratitude.”

At the Profile House, near the Notch, in the Franconia range, I met many acquaintances, some of whom had been there with their families for several weeks. When tired of scenery-hunting and hill-climbing, and thrown entirely upon their own resources, they had invented a “sell” which they perpetrated upon every newcomer. Naturally enough, as I was considered a capital subject for their fun, before I had been there half an hour they had made all the arrangements to take me in. The “sell” consisted in getting up a footrace in which all were to join, and at the word “go” the contestants were to start and run across the open space in front of the hotel to a fence opposite, while the last man who should touch the rail must treat the crowd.

Of course, no one touched the rail at all, except the victim. I suspected no trick, but tried to avoid the race, urging in excuse that I was too old, too corpulent, and besides, as they knew, I was a teetotaler and would not drink their liquor.

“Oh, drink lemonade, if you like,” they said, “but no backing out; and as for corpulence, here is Stephen, our old stage-driver, who weighs three hundred, and he shall run with the rest.”

And in good truth, Stephen, in a warm day especially, would be likely to “run” with the best of them; but I did not know then that Stephen was the stool-pigeon whom they kept to entrap unwary and verdant youths like myself; so looking at his portly form I at once agreed that if Stephen ran I would, as I knew that for a stout man I was pretty quick on my feet. Accordingly, at the word “go,” I started and ran as if the traditional enemy of mankind were in me or after me, but before I had accomplished half the distance, I wondered why at least, one or two of the crowd had not outstripped me, for, in fact, Stephen was the only one whom I expected to beat. Looking back and at once comprehending the “sell,” I decided not to be sold. A correspondent of the New York Sun told how I escaped the trick and the penalty, and how I subsequently paid off the tricksters, in a letter from which I quote the following:

“Barnum threw up his hands before arriving at the railing, and did not touch it at all! It was acknowledged on all sides that the ‘biters were bit.’ ‘But you ran well,’ said those who intended the sell. ‘Yes,’ replied Barnum in high glee, ‘I ran better than I did for Congress; but I was not green enough to touch the rail!’ Of course a roar of laughter followed, and the sellers resolved to try the game the next morning on some other newcomer; but their luck had evidently deserted them, for the next man also ‘smelt a rat,’ and holding up his hands refused to touch the rail. The two successive failures dampened the ardor of the sellers, and they relinquished that trick as a bad job. But the way Barnum sold nearly the whole crowd of sellers, in detail, on the following afternoon, by the old ‘sliver trick,’ was a caution to sore sides. So much laughing in one day was probably never before done in that locality. One after another succeeded in extracting from the palm of Barnum’s hand what each at first supposed was a tormenting sliver, but which turned out to be a broom splinter a foot long which was hidden up B.’s sleeve, except the small point which appeared from under the end of his thumb, apparently protruding from under the skin of his palm. One weak brother nearly fainted as he saw come forth some twelve inches of what he at first supposed was a sliver, but which he was now thoroughly convinced was one of the nerves from Barnum’s arm. Mr. O’Brien, the Wall Street banker, was the first victim. When asked what he thought upon seeing such a long sliver coming from Barnum’s hand, he solemnly replied, ‘I thought he was a dead man!’ It was acknowledged by all that Barnum gave them a world of fun, and that he and his friends left the Profile House with flying colors.”

During the year, Mr. George Wood, a most successful and enterprising manager, had been engaged in enlarging and refitting Banvard’s building, at the corner of Broadway and Thirteenth Street, for a Museum and theater; and wishing to avoid my competition in the business, he proposed, that for a consideration, to be governed to some degree by the receipts, I should bind myself to have no other interest in any Museum or place of amusement in New York, and that I should give him the benefit of my experience, influence and information, and thus aid in advancing his interests and in building up