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
The alarm was instantly given, and the police notified. A reward
was offered of 2,000 francs, and, after a day or two, the thief
was captured and the jewels returned. After that the case of
presents was more carefully guarded.
Everyone who goes to Brussels is supposed to visit the field of
Waterloo; so, before they left, the entire party--Tom Thumb,
Barnum, Prof. Pinte (tutor), and Mr. Stratton (father of the
General), and Mr. H. G. Sherman, went together.
After visiting the church in the village of Waterloo and viewing
the memorial tablets there, they passed to the house where Lord
Uxbridge--Marquis of Anglesey--had had his leg amputated. There
is a little monument in the garden over the shattered limb, and a
part of the boot that covered it was seen in the house. Barnum
procured a three-inch bit of the boot for his Museum, at the same
time remarking, that if the lady in charge was as liberal to all
visitors, that boot had held out wonderfully since 1815.
On approaching the ground they were beset by a dozen or more
guides, each one professing to know the exact spot where every
man had stood, and each claiming to have himself taken part in
the struggle, although most of them were less than twenty-five,
and the battle had been fought some thirty years before. They
finally accepted one old man, who at first declared that he had
been killed in the front ranks, but afterward acknowledged that
he had only been wounded and left on the field for dead three
days.
After having the location of Napoleon's Guard, the Duke of
Wellington, the portion of the field where Blucher entered with
the Prussian army, pointed out to them, and the spots where fell
Sir Alexander Gordon and other celebrities, they asked the guide
if he knew where Captain Tippitiwichet, of Connecticut, was
killed? "Oh, oui, Monsieur," replied the guide confidently. After
pointing out the precise spots where fictitious friends from
Coney Island, New Jersey, Cape Cod and Saratoga had received
their death-wounds, they paid the old humbug and dismissed him.
Upon leaving the field they were met by another crowd of peasants
with relics of the battle for sale. Barnum bought a large number
of pistols, bullets, brass French eagles, buttons, etc., for the
Museum, and the others were equally liberal in their purchases.
They bought also maps, guide-books and pictures, until Mr.
Stratton expressed his belief that the "darned old battle of
Waterloo" had cost more since it was fought than it ever did
before.
Some months afterwards, while they were in Birmingham, they made
the acquaintance of a firm who manufactured and sent to Waterloo
barrels of these "relics" every year.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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