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

house on ground near Iranistan, and she moved into it immediately after her marriage, though of late years she has resided in New-York in winter and in Bridgeport in summer. For Helen and Pauline, I bought and furnished handsome houses in Lexington Avenue, in New-York, within a short distance of my own city residence in Fifth Avenue. A fine young rising generation of my grandchildren is growing up around them and me.

I have written as little as might be, too, about my religious principles and profession, because I agree with the man who, in answer to the pressing inquiry, declared that he had “no religion to speak of”; and I believe with him that true religion is more a matter of work than of words. When I am in the city, I regularly attend the services and preaching of the Rev. Dr. E. H. Chapin, and I usually go to the meetings of the same denomination in Bridgeport. “He builds too low who builds beneath the skies”; and I can truly say that I have always felt my entire dependence upon Him who is the dispenser of all adversity, as well as the giver of all good. With a natural proclivity to look upon the bright side of things, I am sure that under some of the burdens⁠—the Jerome entanglement, for instance⁠—which have borne so heavily upon me, I should have been tempted, as others have been, to suicide, if I had supposed that my troubles were brought upon me by mere blind chance. I knew that I deserved what I received; I had placed too much confidence in mere money and my own personal efforts; I was too much concerned in material prosperity; and I felt that the blow was wisely intended for my ultimate benefit⁠—a chastening, which, like the husks to the prodigal son, should cause me to “come to myself,” and teach me the lesson that there is something infinitely better than money or position or worldly prosperity in our “Father’s house.”

And I should be ungrateful indeed, if on my birthday, this fifth of July, 1869, when I enter upon my sixtieth year in full health and vigor, with the possibility of many happy days to come, I did not reverently recognize the beneficent Hand that has crowned me with so many comforts, and surrounded me with so many blessings. It is on this day, in my own beautiful home of Waldemere, that I write these concluding lines, which record a long and busy career, with the sincere hope that my experiences, if not my example, will benefit my fellow-men.

Appendix I Rest Only Found in Action

A New Experience⁠—“Doing Nothing” a Failure⁠—Excitement Demanded-Visit of English Friends⁠—I Show Them Our Country⁠—Niagara Falls⁠—We Visit Cuba⁠—New Orleans⁠—Mammoth Cave⁠—Washington⁠—“Castle Thunder”⁠—Trip to California⁠—Salt Lake City⁠—I Offer Brigham Young Two Hundred Thousand Dollars to “Show” Him “Down East”⁠—Am “Interviewed” at Sacramento and San Francisco⁠—The Chinese⁠—Sea Lions⁠—The Geysers⁠—Mariposa⁠—The Big Trees⁠—Inspiration Point⁠—Yosemite Valley⁠—The Remarkable Town of Greeley, in Colorado⁠—Quebec⁠—Saginaw River⁠—Saratoga⁠—Alice Cary⁠—Wild Buffalo Hunt in Kansas⁠—My Great Travelling Show⁠—The Winter Exhibition in New York⁠—The Empire Rink⁠—Success of the Show⁠—Opinions of the Press⁠—Curiosities from California⁠—My Imitators⁠—Attempts to Deceive and Swindle the Public.

Everyone knows the story of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. His ambition gratified to satiety in the conquest of kingdoms, and the firm establishment of his empire, he craved rest. He abdicated his throne, “retired from business,” content to live on his laurels in the peaceful shades of the Cloister at Yustee. The tradition is that here he forgot the world without, withdrew in thought as in person from the cares and turmoils of state, and found rest and cheerfulness by alternating his devotions with the tinkering of clocks. Perhaps everyone is not so familiar with the somewhat recent correction by Mr. Stirling of this romantic story. In fact, the Emperor was never so restless as when he was taking rest; was never so full of the perplexities of empire as when, in “due form,” he had shaken them off. In the Cloister he was the same man that he was in the Camp and the Court, and when he sought to repress his energies, they simply tormented him.

Not denying that my egotism is equal to a good deal, I must beg my readers not to suppose that I assume for my own history a very extended similarity to that of the greatest monarch of his time. In fact, the points of difference are quite as striking as those of resemblance. It is true, we both tried the “clock business;” but I must claim that my tinkering in that way throws that of the Emperor entirely in the shade. I was not, however, fool enough to go into a cloister. Let not an illustration any more than a parable “run on all fours.” But I want a royal illustration; and the history of Charles the Fifth, in the particular of abdicating for rest, I find very pertinent to my own experience. I took a formal, and as I then supposed, a last adieu of my readers on my fifty-ninth birthday. I was, as I had flattered myself, through with travel, with adventure, and with business, save so far as the care of my competence would require my attention. My book closed without a suspicion that in any subsequent edition “more of the same sort” would make possible an Additional Chapter. It is with a sense of surprise, and withal a feeling akin to the ludicrous, that in this new edition, I cannot bring my career up to my sixty-second year, without filling a few more pages, in their contents not unlike in kind to those which make the bulk of my book.

As stated [previously], my final retirement from the managerial profession closed with the destruction of my Museum by fire, March 3, 1868. But when I wrote that sentence I had not learned by a three years’ cessation of business, how utterly fruitless it is to attempt to chain