Barnum returned to England early in 1858 and took General Tom Thumb on another successful tour of the British Isles. Soon after beginning this tour he discovered that it did not require his personal attention--General Tom Thumb was now famous enough to require only routine exploitation--and he therefore placed his midget in the hands of assistants and devoted his own time to another activity. Some friends in England suggested that he lecture on “The Art of Money-Getting.” At first the paradox of the title amused him, and he tells us that he thought himself more competent to lecture on “The Art of Money-Losing.” But he came to the conclusion that in order to lose money, it was first necessary to have made it. However, the paradox remains, that Barnum helped to pay his debts incurred by careless handling of money by means of a lecture on “The Art of Money-Getting.” In his lecture Barnum stated many bald platitudes, no longer honored even by time, and he added to them none of the humorous twists with which he sometimes enlivened truisms. It is difficult to realize from a reading of this printed lecture why it was so successful, unless many good anecdotes, which Barnum said were omitted in the printed version for the sake of brevity, alleviated the dullness of his commonplace ideas. He assured his readers of things they knew so well that they should have begun to doubt them. In simple terms he urged economy: he did not believe, he said, in saving extravagantly, but he was also opposed to lavish spending. Such expressions as “laying by a ‘nest-egg,’” “easy come, easy go,” are elaborated in great detail and with little novelty. “The old suit of clothes, and the old bonnet and dress will answer for another season; the Croton or spring water will taste better than champagne; a cold bath and a brisk walk will prove more exhilarating than a ride in the finest coach; a social chat, an evening’s reading in the family circle, or an hour’s play of ‘hunt the slipper’ and ‘blind man’s buff,’ will be far more pleasant than a fifty or a hundred dollar party, when the reflection on the difference in cost is indulged in by those who begin to know the pleasures of saving.” Sound health, and above all, abstention from intoxicating drinks, and from tobacco, “the noxious weed,” are indispensable to success. He said that he spoke from experience, for he used to smoke until he “trembled like an aspen leaf,” but on the advice of a physician he had given up tobacco entirely. But economy and abstemiousness were not the only attributes of Success: he assured his audiences that “unless a man enters upon the vocation intended for him by nature, and best suited to his peculiar genius, he cannot succeed.” He did not tell them how a man was to determine such natural fitness for vocation, and he neglected to mention that for some years of his own early manhood he looked with little success for the vocation suited to his peculiar genius. “Avoid debt,” “go-aheaditiveness,”