Not until then did Barnum hand the telegram to his friend, William G. Coe, of Winsted, who immediately communicated the intelligence to several members. Warm sympathizers at once crowded around him, and one of his strongest opponents pushing forward, seized his hand, and said: "Mr. Barnum, I am truly sorry to hear of your great misfortune." "Sorry," replied Barnum; "why, my dear sir, I shall not have time to be sorry in a week! It will take me at least that length of time before I can get over laughing at having whipped you all so nicely on that bill." But he did find time to be sorry when, next day, he went to New York and saw nothing of what had been the American Museum but a smouldering mass of debris. Here was destroyed, in a few hours, the result of many years' toil in accumulating from every part of the world myriads of curious productions of nature and art--a collection which a half a million of dollars and a quarter of a century could not restore. In addition to these, there were many Revolutionary relics and other articles of historical interest that could never be duplicated. Not a thousand dollars worth of property was saved; the loss was irreparable, and the insurance was only forty thousand dollars. The fire probably originated in the engine-room, where steam was constantly kept up to pump fresh air into the waters of the aquaria and to propel the immense fans for cooling the atmosphere of the rooms. All the New York newspapers made a great "sensation" of the fire, and the full particulars were copied in journals throughout the country. A facetious reporter; Mr. Nathan D. Urner, of the Tribune, wrote the following amusing account, which appeared in that journal, July 14, 1865, and was very generally quoted from and copied by provincial papers, many of whose readers accepted every line of the glowing narrative as "gospel truth":