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

years, I presume his weekly receipts, when he has acted, have been nearly $3,000. The late Miss Mary Gannon also commenced at the Museum, and many more actors and actresses of celebrity have been, from time to time, engaged there. What was once the small Lecture Room was converted into a spacious and beautiful theater, extending over the lots adjoining the Museum, and capable of holding about three thousand persons. The saloons were greatly multiplied and enlarged, and the “egress” having been made to work to perfection, on holidays I advertised Lecture Room performances every hour through the afternoon and evening, and consequently the actors and actresses were dressed for the stage as early as eleven o’clock in the morning, and did not resume their ordinary clothes till ten o’clock at night. In these busy days the meals for the company were brought in and served in the dressing-rooms and greenrooms, and the company always received extra pay.

Leaving nothing undone that would bring Barnum and his Museum before the public, I often engaged some exhibition, knowing that it would directly bring no extra dollars to the treasury, but hoping that it would incite a newspaper paragraph which would float through the columns of the American press and be copied, perhaps, abroad, and my hopes in this respect were often gratified.

I confess that I liked the Museum mainly for the opportunities it afforded for rapidly making money. Before I bought it, I weighed the matter well in my mind, and was convinced that I could present to the American public such a variety, quantity and quality of amusement, blended with instruction, “all for twenty-five cents, children half price,” that my attractions would be irresistible, and my fortune certain. I myself relished a higher grade of amusement, and I was a frequent attendant at the opera, first-class concerts, lectures, and the like; but I worked for the million, and I knew the only way to make a million from my patrons was to give them abundant and wholesome attractions for a small sum of money.

About the first of July, 1842, I began to make arrangements for extra novelties, additional performances, a large amount of extra advertising, and an outdoor display for the “Glorious Fourth.” Large particolored bills were ordered, transparencies were prepared, the free band of music was augmented by a trumpeter, and columns of advertisements, headed with large capitals, were written and put on file.

I wanted to run out a string of American flags across the street on that day, for I knew there would be thousands of people passing the Museum with leisure and pocket-money, and I felt confident that an unusual display of national flags would arrest their patriotic attention, and bring many of them within my walls. Unfortunately for my purpose, St. Paul’s Church stood directly opposite, and there was nothing to which I could attach my flag-rope, unless it might be one of the trees in the churchyard. I went to the vestrymen for permission to so attach my flag rope on the Fourth of July, and they were indignant at what they called my “insulting proposition”; such a concession would be “sacrilege.” I plied them with arguments, and appealed to their patriotism, but in vain.

Returning to the Museum I gave orders to have the string of flags made ready, with directions at daylight on the Fourth of July to attach one end of the rope to one of the third story windows of the Museum, and the other end to a tree in St. Paul’s churchyard. The great day arrived, and my orders were strictly followed. The flags attracted great attention, and before nine o’clock I have no doubt that hundreds of additional visitors were drawn by this display into the Museum. By half-past nine Broadway was thronged, and about that time two gentlemen in a high state of excitement rushed into my office, announcing themselves as injured and insulted vestrymen of St. Paul’s Church.

“Keep cool, gentlemen,” said I; “I guess it is all right.”

“Right!” indignantly exclaimed one of them, “do you think it is right to attach your Museum to our Church? We will show you what is ‘right’ and what is law, if we live till tomorrow; those flags must come down instantly.”

“Thank you,” I said, “but let us not be in a hurry. I will go out with you and look at them, and I guess we can make it all right.”

Going into the street I remarked: “Really, gentlemen, these flags look very beautiful; they do not injure your tree; I always stop my balcony music for your accommodation whenever you hold weekday services, and it is but fair that you should return the favor.”

“We could indict your ‘music,’ as you call it, as a nuisance, if we chose,” answered one vestryman, “and now I tell you that if these flags are not taken down in ten minutes, I will cut them down.”

His indignation was at the boiling point. The crowd in the street was dense, and the angry gesticulation of the vestryman attracted their attention. I saw there was no use in trying to parley with him or coax him, and so, assuming an angry air, I rolled up my sleeves, and exclaimed, in a loud tone⁠—

“Well, Mister, I should just like to see you dare to cut down the American flag on the Fourth of July; you must be a Britisher to make such a threat as that; but I’ll show you a thousand pairs of Yankee hands in two minutes, if you dare to attempt to take down the stars and stripes on this great birthday of American freedom!”

“What’s that John Bull a-saying,” asked a brawny fellow, placing himself in front of the irate vestryman; “Look here, old fellow,” he continued, “if you want to save a whole bone in your body, you had better slope, and never dare to talk again about hauling down the American flag in the city of New York.”

Throngs of excited, exasperated men crowded around, and the