Castle Garden, which since its construction in 1807 had been a fort, a cabaret, a music hall and an opera house, and which is now the Aquarium, was capable of accommodating almost 10,000 people, standing and sitting. Barnum had divided the hall into three sections, each of which was marked by lamps of different colors, red, yellow, and blue. The tickets corresponded in color with the lamps, and the one hundred ushers wore rosettes of those colors and carried wands of those colors, so that the audience gained their seats without the devastating crushes which occurred at the Jenny Lind performances in England. The newspapers of Wednesday morning, September 11, 1850, reflect the feverish excitement that was in the air. The _Tribune_ had imported from Boston a special critic to report the concerts, and that paper informed its readers on the morning of the first concert: “To-night will be a new Avatar in our musical history--the first appearance of another divinity in the world of Song.” The _Courier and Enquirer_ warned those who intended to be present not to applaud until they were quite sure Jenny Lind had finished, “as Jenny Lind is said to diminish a final note until her audience are quite sure it has ceased, and then swell it out again upon their astonished and delighted ears.” The _Herald_ wrote: “Jenny Lind is the most popular woman in the world at this moment,--perhaps the most popular that ever was in it.” In the excitement of the moment the _Herald_ apparently forgot the Virgin Mary. This advance adulation placed Jenny Lind at a disadvantage, for it made it necessary for her to live up to a tremendous expectation, if she was to please the discriminating. The _Courier and Enquirer_ sensed this difficulty, and begged its readers on the morning of the first concert not to be disappointed “if Jenny Lind’s singing be at all like any they ever heard from mortal lips,” for, the editor insisted gravely, “Jenny Lind is merely a mortal woman, of very substantial flesh and blood, who, gifted by nature with genius and a voice, has made herself a great singer by hard labor; just such labor, such daily practice as provokes them to wish that their neighbor, Miss A., who is an amateur vocalist, lived a square or two further down the street, when she takes her music lessons.” Barnum, too, was afraid that the great expectations which he had so largely created by his advance publicity, would act as a boomerang and cause the public to accept the reality with disappointment.