They spent the first of April, 1851, at Nashville. In the forenoon of the day, the various members of the party amused themselves by playing little "April Fool" jokes on Barnum, and after dinner he took his revenge upon them. Securing a supply of telegraph blanks and envelopes, he set to work preparing messages full of the most sensational and startling intelligence, for most of the people in the party. Almost every one of them presently received what purported to be a telegraphic despatch. Barnum's own daughter did not escape. She was informed that her mother, her cousin, and several other relatives, were waiting for her in Louisville, and various other important and extraordinary items of domestic intelligence were communicated to her. Mr. Le Grand Smith was told by a despatch from his father that his native village in Connecticut, was in ashes, including his own homestead, etc. Several of Barnum's employees had most liberal offers of engagements from banks and other institutions at the North. Burke, and others of the musical professors, were offered princely salaries by opera managers, and many of them received most tempting inducements to proceed immediately to the World's Fair in London. One married gentleman received the gratifying intelligence that he had for two days been the father of a pair of bouncing boys (mother and children doing well), an event which he had been anxiously looking for during the week, though on a somewhat more limited scale. In fact, nearly every person in the party engaged by Barnum received some extraordinary telegraphic intelligence; and, as the great impressario managed to have the despatches delivered simultaneously, each recipient was for some time busily occupied with his own personal news. By and by each began to tell his neighbor his good or bad tidings; and each was, of course, rejoiced or grieved, according to circumstances. Several gave Mr. Barnum notice of their intention to leave him, in consequence of better offers; and a number of them sent off telegraphic despatches and letters by mail, in answer to those received. The man who had so suddenly become the father of twins, telegraphed to his wife to "be of good cheer," and that he would "start for home to-morrow." And so cleverly did Barnum manage the whole business that his victims did not discover how they had been fooled until next morning, when they read the whole story in a local newspaper, to which it had been given by Barnum himself.