The popular journals and Barnum’s host of patrons accepted his book as the greatest curiosity of all, and half a million copies were sold, according to his estimates. His was the virtue of success, and the large majority, who bowed down in what William James called “the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS,” accepted Barnum’s autobiography as a handbook. It had the advantage over all other such manuals, that it was witty. Mark Twain “sat up nights to absorb it, and woke early and lighted the lamp to follow the career of the great showman,” according to Albert Bigelow Paine, his biographer. Mrs. Clemens could not understand, did not at all approve of her husband’s interest in Barnum and Barnum’s methods. “She did not realize then,” wrote Mr. Paine, “his vast interest in the study of human nature, or that such a book contained what Mr. Howells calls ‘the root of the human matter,’ the inner revelation of the human being at first hand.” She also did not realize then, or ever, that there was much of Colonel Sellers in Samuel L. Clemens, and that her husband was compelled by circumstances to make a fortune first, and immortality afterwards. It is natural that Mark Twain should have found worth reading by early morning lamplight the chronicle of an adventurer who had carved out of the world a fortune for himself. Barnum also admired Mark Twain. He tried persistently to harness his friend’s literary ability and popularity to his own enterprises. Whenever Mark Twain spent a night in Barnum’s home at Bridgeport the greatest showman on earth tried very hard to get the highest paid writer in the country to write a piece about the circus. The book itself undoubtedly contains “the root of the human matter,” and it is so fascinating because Barnum succeeds in concealing nothing except certain facts. He attempted to paint himself in angel white, with a dash of coloring in the cheeks to make the picture popular, but his very strivings after sainthood reveal his mind and character too plainly, and whenever he tries most to deceive the reader, he succeeds only in enlightening him. The book is well written, if we consider that the man who wrote it left school when he was twelve years old and found little leisure for study in composition after that period. Of course, the subject was one that always delighted the author, and his inspiration was therefore ever with him.