A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. BarnumBenton, Joel
History
A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career: Life of Hon. Phineas T. Barnum
Benton, Joel
Barnum's American Museum; Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891; Circus owners -- United States -- Biography
Protestant Half-Orphan Asylum . . . . . . . .500
Roman Catholic Half-Orphan Asylum . . . . . .500
Old Ladies' Asylum. . . . . . . . . . . . . .500
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . .$10,000
"In case the money coming to her shall exceed this sum, she will
hereafter designate the charity to which it is to be
appropriated. Mr. Barnum was then about retiring, when there was
a universal call for Jenny Lind. The songstress, however, had
already taken her departure, and the excited crowd, after giving
a few more cheers, followed her example, and slowly surged out of
the castle door, and down the canopied bridge, in a glow of
good-humor and admiration. A few disorderly vagrants collected on
the bridges leading to the Bath Houses, hooted at the throng as
it passed out, but everybody went home quietly, with a new joy at
his heart, and a new thought in his brain.
"Jenny Lind's second concert was in every respect as complete a
triumph as the first. The audience numbered upward of SEVEN
THOUSAND, filling the vast amphitheatre to the topmost circles of
the gallery. The sight of that dense sea of heads, from either
extremity of the balcony, reminded us of one of Martin's grand,
gloomy pictures, and the resemblance was further increased by the
semi-oriental appearance of the hall, with its long, light
pillars dropping from the centre, as well as by the dimness of
its illumination, the lamps, many and bright as they were, being
lost in the immense area of the building.
"The concert was a repetition of the first, with the only
difference that the orchestra volunteered the "Wedding March,"
from Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream," whose short,
crackling blaze of harmony received full justice from the sure
and well-tempered brass instruments. Weber's overture to "Oberon"
was finely rendered, and the composition is as fine a specimen of
musical fairy-land as could be found before young Mendelssohn
dreamed Shakspere's dream over in his own way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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