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

across Vermont, exhibiting in the more important places, to Albany and Troy. At Albany it was impossible to secure a suitable locality for the exhibition short of a distance of two miles from the city; yet here distance seemed literally to “lend enchantment to the view,” for every exhibition was thronged, and here as everywhere, thousands were turned away who were unable to find room.

Our route from Albany was along the line of the New York Central Railroad to Buffalo, and back by the Erie Railway to the Hudson River, exhibiting nearly everywhere, and after exhibitions at Catskill, Poughkeepsie and Newburg, returning to New York. Our tour through the country was more than a carnival⁠—it was a perfect ovation; and best of all, the public and the press, with one accord, pronounced the exhibition even better and greater than I had advertised.

At the close of the travelling season I desired to exhibit my great show to my New York patrons, and to return again to the metropolis where, in days gone by, the children, the parents, and the grandparents of the present generation have flocked in millions to my museum. Accordingly I secured the Empire Rink immediately after the close of the American Institute Fair, and opened in that building November 13, 1871. At least ten thousand people were present, and in response to an enthusiastic welcoming call, I made a few remarks, the report of which I copy from the next morning’s New York World:

“A popular Eastern poet has said the noblest art a human being can acquire is the power of giving happiness to others. I sincerely hope this is true, for my highest ambition during the last thirty years has been to make the public happy. When I introduced the Swedish nightingale, Jenny Lind, to the American public in 1851, a thrill of pleasure was felt throughout the land by our most refined and intellectual citizens, as well as by every lover of melody in the humblest walks of life. As a museum proprietor for nearly thirty years I catered successfully to the pleasures of many millions of persons. Nor have my efforts been confined to this continent. As a public exhibitor I have appeared before kings, queens and emperors in the Old World, and have given gratification to many millions of their devoted subjects. Fifty years ago some moralists taught that it was wicked to laugh, but all divines of the present day have abandoned that untenable and austere position, and now almost universally agree that laughter is not only conducive to health, but very proper and to be encouraged, for, as the bard of Avon justly says: ‘With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.’ In fact, Mr. Beecher permits laughing in his church, holding that it is as right to laugh as to cry. It has been said that I have caused more people to laugh than any other man on this continent. Ten years ago one of our first families in Fifth avenue were conversing regarding the duties, responsibilities, and trials of this life. Their little daughter of seven was present. The father remarked that it was a pretty hard world to live in⁠—full of struggles, labors, toils and disappointments. The mother added that there was much poverty and suffering in the world, etc., but the little girl chirped in, ‘Well, I think it is a beautiful and pleasant world. I have my dear mamma and papa, and my good grandma there, besides I have Barnum’s Museum to go to, and surely I don’t want a happier world than this.’ My great object has been to elevate the standard of amusements, to render them instructive as well as amusing, to divest them of all vulgar and immoral tendencies, and to make all my exhibitions worthy the patronage of the best and most respectable families. Finally, my great desire has been to give my patrons ten times the worth of their money, and in this my last crowning effort to overshadow and totally eclipse all other exhibitions in the world.”

And the metropolitan press, people and patronage combined, only repeated with more emphasis, the universal testimony of the country as to the extent and merits of this great show. Want of space permits me to copy only two or three of the favorable articles which appeared from day to day during the entire exhibition in the columns of the New York press. The following is from the Baptist Union:

Rare Curiosities

Mr. P. T. Barnum has organized at the Empire Rink a very large exhibition, combining a Museum, Menagarie, International Zoological Garden, Polytechnic Institute and Hippodrome. Having examined the various departments of this vast combination, we do not hesitate to recommend our friends to go with their families to visit it, and they will enjoy a treat seldom offered in a lifetime. The department of natural history is especially excellent and interesting, and embraces the largest and rarest collection of wild animals ever exhibited together in this or probably in any other country. Everything connected with the entertainments admirably harmonizes with the good taste and respectability which give to all of Mr. Barnum’s enterprises a refinement and morality which commend them to the most scrupulous. The great Hippodrome Pageant, in which appear so many elephants, camels, dromedaries, horses and ponies, with men, women and children in costumes representing the Arabs and Bedouins of the desert, Roman knights, heralds, warriors, kings, princes and bashaws of the olden time, is truly interesting and grand, and is worth going a long distance to see.

That popular religious journal, the New York Christian Leader, edited by the Rev. G. H. Emerson, speaks as follows:

A Good Sermon For Showmen

The success which everywhere attends Barnum’s great show ought to be evidence to the managers who furnish amusement to the public that profanity and indecency of speech and gesture⁠—all of which Mr. Barnum excludes by promptly and indignantly discharging the offender⁠—are not of the nature of supply meeting a popular demand. If