Barnum’s lecture was proportionately as popular in the provinces as it was in London. He delivered it more than one hundred times during 1859 and repeated it several times with success in London. At Oxford and Cambridge the undergraduates received his wisdom with enthusiasm, but it was not always serious applause. At Oxford, after he was interrupted several times, he added this remark to the lecture: “I am an old showman, and I like to please my patrons. Now, it is quite immaterial to me; you may furnish the entertainment for the hour, or I will endeavor to do so, or we will take portions of the time by turns--you supplying a part of the amusement and I a part--as we say sometimes in America, ‘you pays your money, and you takes your choice.’” The students decided on a compromise: Barnum to supply half the entertainment, and they would supply the other half, and after fifteen minutes of the lecture, some one suggested singing “Yankee Doodle.” But Barnum was pleased with their jocularity and happy with the receipts, for that night at Oxford brought him £169. A London publisher offered $6,000 for the copyright to “The Art of Money-Getting,” but, wisely, Barnum declined, for he intended to deliver the lecture in the United States and again in England, and he also wanted it for that second edition of the autobiography, where, he agreed with the _Times_, it would form an interesting new chapter of the chronicle of his conquests. III Barnum returned to the United States in 1859 with enough money to pay all but $20,000 of his debts. His family had boarded and lived cheaply, and all their money was devoted to taking up Barnum’s notes and buying in East Bridgeport real estate at assignees’ sales. On March 17, 1860, Butler and Greenwood, who had purchased the Museum collection, sold it to Barnum again. Although during their management a newspaper reported that “there is no pleasanter temple for the vacant hour,” and that in the Museum might be seen “parsons, poets, publishers, and other public characters looking at the curiosities and studying the fishes,” the Museum had not prospered during Barnum’s absence. Barnum renovated the building and decorated it with brilliant flags and streamers. Flaming posters announcing, “Barnum’s on his feet again,” were plastered throughout the city. A large audience greeted him on March 24, 1860, when he made a speech about his decline, fall, and rise again. An advertisement in the _Herald_ of March 24 read: “Between the first and second acts Mr. P. T. Barnum will appear, and give a brief history of his Adventures as a Clock Maker, showing how the clock ran down and how it was wound up; shadowing forth in the same the future of the Museum.”