A passenger on the same steamer, who published his account of the departure in the _New York Herald_ for September 2, 1850, reported this incident just before the boat sailed: “An amusing incident, however, occurred about this time, which excited the mirth of even Jenny herself, and which I quietly noted as one of the many desperate cases of ‘Lind fever’ that fell under my observation. Accompanying us in the tender was an elderly man of very genteel appearance, who paced the deck in evident anxiety and impatience, and whose luggage seemed to consist of a solitary pair of unmentionables, which were carelessly rolled up and ‘tucked’ under his arm. Arriving alongside of the leviathan _Atlantic_, he sprang over the gangway with surprising agility, and exclaimed, ‘Where’s Jenny Lind? Can anybody tell me if Jenny Lind is to be seen? Oh! where the devil is Jenny Lind?’ Not obtaining a very satisfactory reply to his beseeching queries (and especially to the last, which was uttered in a tone betokening the strongest kind of despair), and being informed that he must either leave the ship or submit to summary ejectment, he broke away from the gangway and rushed forward, muttering, ‘Impossible! I must go. Can’t be helped. Borrow clothes on board, no doubt,’ &c.” The enthusiasm was unparalleled, and more of it was personal than artistic. It was natural that thousands should bid her good-bye, for in 1847, 1848, 1849, and 1850 Jenny Lind was more popular personally in England than Queen Victoria. Her charities had contributed somewhat to this effect, for she had sung many times for the benefit of hospitals and other institutions. This was the state of the public mind about Jenny Lind when Barnum imported her in August, 1850. And he had taken steps to insure that that state of mind would be transplanted with her to the United States in even greater measure. IV Music was not flourishing in the United States when Barnum engaged Jenny Lind. Lyman Abbott’s father, who enjoyed music, his son writes in his _Reminiscences_, went regularly to Christy’s Minstrels, because the voices were good, although the jokes were bad. Madame Malibran, the sister of Manuel Garcia, who taught Jenny Lind, appeared in opera in New York under the management of her father in 1826. But the Havana Opera Company, of which she was the star, did not create much enthusiasm when it performed opera in English. N. P. Willis, the poet, who wrote a memoir of Jenny Lind, said that her arrival in the United States marked an epoch for music in America. “No singer, who could still please a court and an European capital, thought yet of a trip to the transatlantic Republic; and though sometimes, as in the case of Malibran, we have had great celebrities here _before_ they were famous, and oftener still, have had them here _after_ their dawn and in their twilight--we had never seen one of the first magnitude during her meridian.”