Barnum dined with Jenny Lind that afternoon, and she courteously asked to drink his health. “Miss Lind,” Barnum responded, “I do not think you can ask any other favor on earth which I would not gladly grant; but I am a teetotaler, and must beg to be permitted to drink your health and happiness in a glass of cold water.” She was much astonished that there should be a man who did not drink European light wines, but she understood and respected his views. The crowds continued outside the Irving House all day, and every time a shadow passed before Jenny Lind’s window, or what the crowd chose as her window, enthusiastic cheers greeted it. At half-past twelve that night, the New York Musical Fund Society, which had been preparing for this occasion for three weeks, began an instrumental serenade. The musicians were escorted by three hundred firemen in red shirts, bearing lighted torches. More than 20,000 people watched, listened and cheered. Broadway was completely blocked, and the three hundred spluttering torches revealed figures on the roofs, in the neighboring windows, and hanging to lamp posts and awning frames. Barnum led Jenny Lind to one of the hotel balconies, after the loud demands for her presence threatened to drown the music of the serenade. He asked the musicians to play “Yankee Doodle” and “Hail Columbia,” and Jenny Lind with admirable tact encored both those songs. The crowd cheered madly, and she repeatedly waved her handkerchief. At quarter past one the music was finished, and she tried to go to bed, but the crowd was not yet ready for bed. George Loder, head of the Musical Fund Society, made a speech of welcome, which, by common agreement, was much too long. One of the newspaper correspondents intimated that the serenade and the speech were offered in the hope that Jenny Lind would return the compliment by giving a benefit performance for the New York Musical Fund Society. The New York correspondent of the _Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch_ reported the following conversation which he gathered in the crowd: “Sa-ay, Joe, don’t you think Barnum’ll make a lose? Thousand dollars a night’s a big pile, and singin’ isn’t dancin’; Fanny Elssler was the gal for _my_ money.” “Oh, shut up! What the hell do _we_ know about singin’?” “I’ll go in for her too; but I thought she was one of Barnum’s hums, for I heered he said he didn’t care if she hadn’t no more voice than a crow, he knowed we’d all swear she sung like an angel, if it cost us ten dollars to say we’d heered her. You know the time he showed the horse with his tail where his head ought to be? Well, all of them that paid their two shillings was satisfied. Wasn’t he stood in his stall with his tail in the manger--and didn’t they tell all the rest to go in and win, for it was a fus’ rate curiosity, jes so and no mistake?”