“Business,” he wrote, “is the ordinary means of living for nearly all of us. And in what business is there not humbug? ‘There’s cheating in all trades but ours,’ is the prompt reply from the boot-maker with his brown paper soles, the grocer with his floury sugar and chicoried coffee, the butcher with his mysterious sausages and queer veal, the dry-goods man with his ‘damaged goods wet at the great fire,’ and his ‘selling at a ruinous loss,’ the stock-broker with his brazen assurance that your company is bankrupt and your stock not worth a cent (if he wants to buy it), the horse jockey with his black arts and spavined brutes, the milk man with his tin aquaria, the land-agent with his nice new maps and beautiful descriptions of distant scenery, the newspaper man with his ‘immense circulation,’ the publisher with his ‘Great American Novel,’ the city auctioneer with his ‘Pictures by the Old Masters,’--all and every one protest each his own innocence, and warn you against the deceits of the rest. My inexperienced friend, take it for granted that they all tell the truth--about each other! and then transact your business to the best of your ability on your own judgment. Never fear but that you will get experience enough, and that you will pay well for it too; and towards the time when you shall no longer need earthly goods, you will begin to know how to buy.” But in Barnum’s opinion there was one more thorough humbug than all the others: “The greatest humbug of all is the man who believes--or pretends to believe--that everything and everybody are humbugs.” Then follows this detailed definition of the chronic cynic: