“You will observe in my paper of last week that I have engaged the services of our friend Andrews; if you can give him a compliment you would much oblige me, as by my copying it into my columns it might prove of much service to my paper. Please accept my warmest thanks and those of my wife for your assistance in recovering the lost shawl. It came safe and my wife was thrown into ecstasies as an offset for the tears, which (womanlike) she had shed over the loss of it. Lest I might tire your patience too much I will draw to a close. Please give my respects to Judge Niles and the rest of our friends, tell them that I am suffering for daring to tell the truth but that the kindness of friends keeps my spirits buoyed up in this day of trial. Let me hear from you when opportunity shall offer and believe this to be from your Ob’t servant in good spirits. P. T. BARNUM. “G. WELLES, ESQ.” Barnum in his early years was a Democrat, because Grandfather Phineas Taylor was a staunch Democrat, and his father had also voted that ticket. If we are to judge from the above letter, written when he was twenty-two years old, Barnum had some of the qualifications of a ward politician. He refers several times to “our friends,” and he seems to have believed firmly that it was a duty as well as a privilege to attend party conventions. The end of Barnum’s term in the Danbury Common Jail was celebrated by indignant defenders of a free press from the surrounding country. In the court-room where he had been convicted and sentenced an ode, written for the occasion, was sung, and an eloquent oration on the Freedom of the Press was delivered by the Rev. Theophilus Fiske. Both the ode and the oration have disappeared into limbo. “A sumptuous repast” was served to several hundred guests, and speeches and toasts continued most of the afternoon. But the most imposing part of the celebration was still to come. It was reported in Barnum’s paper, _The Herald of Freedom_, for December 12, 1832: “P. T. Barnum and the band of music took their seats in a coach drawn by six horses, which had been prepared for the occasion. The coach was preceded by forty horsemen, and a marshal, bearing the national standard. Immediately in the rear of the coach was the carriage of the Orator and the President of the day, followed by the Committee on Arrangements and sixty carriages of citizens, which joined in escorting the editor to his home in Bethel.