Grandfather Phineas Taylor wrote his grandson in 1828, offering him half of his carriage-house rent free, if young Phineas would return from New York and establish some kind of business in Bethel. Before he left New York Phineas made arrangements for shipments with wholesale merchants, and upon his return to Bethel turned the carriage-house, which was situated on the main street of Bethel, into a retail fruit and confectionery store, where ale and oysters were also sold. Phineas invested his entire fortune, $120, in his Bethel store, and during the first day’s business took in $63. Grandfather Phineas Taylor was much pleased with his boy’s success; he advised him to take the agency for some country-wide lottery in addition to his store business, and Barnum followed his advice. The store was the resort of the country loungers and the town wits, and the practical jokes which were played there, and which delighted Barnum so much that he reproduced them in detail in his autobiography, contributed to make him what he later was. In the autobiography he himself attributes his development in part to the influence of these stale puns and crude practical jokes, which he did not seem to realize, even in his middle age, were far-fetched, and often barbaric. When Barnum was eighteen years old, his store in Bethel was visited by the first showman he ever met, Hackariah Bailey, not related to James A. Bailey, who was Barnum’s partner many years later. Hackariah Bailey was a “character.” He imported the first elephant that was ever brought to this country and made a fortune by exhibiting it. Later he toured with several traveling menageries, operated opposition steamboats on the Hudson River, and finally built a hostelry in Somers, New York, which he called “Elephant Hotel,” where a golden elephant stood on a large stone pillar in front of the veranda as homage to the foundation of the Bailey fortune. Young Barnum listened with great interest to the stories of Hackariah Bailey.