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
So it is with the poor African. You may take a dozen specimens of
both sexes from the lowest type of man found in Africa; their
race has been buried for ages in ignorance and barbarism, and you
can scarcely perceive that they have any more of manhood or
womanhood than so many orang-outangs or gorillas. You look at
their low foreheads, their thick skulls and lips, their woolly
heads, their flat noses, their dull, lazy eyes, and you may he
tempted to adopt the language of this minority committee, and
exclaim: Surely these people have "no inventive faculties, no
genius for the arts, or for any of those occupations requiring
intellect and wisdom." But bring them out into the light of
civilization; let them and their children come into the genial
sunshine of Christianity; teach them industry, self-reliance, and
self-respect; let them learn what too few white Christians have
yet understood, that cleanliness is akin to godliness, and a part
of godliness; and the human soul will begin to develop itself.
Each generation, blessed with churches and common schools will
gradually exhibit the result of such culture; the low foreheads
will be raised and widened by an active and expanded brain; the
vacant eye of barbarism, ignorance and idleness will light up
with the fire of intelligence, education, ambition, activity and
Christian civilization; and you will find the immortal soul
asserting her dignity, by the development of a man who would
startle by his intelligence the honorable gentleman from
Wallingford, who has presumed to compare beings made in God's
image with "oxen and asses." That honorable gentleman, if he is
rightly reported in the papers (I did not have the happiness to
hear his speech), has mistaken the nature of the colored man. The
honorable gentleman reminds me of the young man who went abroad,
and when he returned, there was nothing in America that could
compare with what he had seen in foreign lands. Niagara Falls was
nowhere; the White Mountains were "knocked higher than a kite" by
Mont Blanc; our rivers were so large that they were vulgar, when
contrasted with the beautiful little streams and rivulets of
Europe; our New York Central Park was eclipsed by the Bois de
Bologne and the Champs Elysees of Paris, or Hyde or Regent Park
of London, to say nothing of the great Phoenix Park at Dublin.
"They have introduced a couple of Venetian gondolas on the large
pond in Central Park," remarked a friend.
"All very well," replied the verdant traveler, "but between you
and me, these birds can't stand our cold climate more than one
season." The gentleman from Wallingford evidently had as little
idea of the true nature of the African as the young swell had of
the pleasure-boats of Venice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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