“I propose to have one or two thousand such bills printed in 2 colors so that they will be good for any place where I am to speak. I will send you say 100 of these bills on Tuesday and will write you what they cost, and you can use them or any portion of them or not as you please. They will doubtless be cheaper & more effective than you could get a single hundred for. “Truly yours, “P. T. BARNUM. “P. S. The _Manchester Weekly Advertiser_ says: ‘The audience _thoroughly enjoyed_ the lecture _from the beginning to the end_, and our opinion is that it was _decidedly clever_, and just what we should expect from Mr. Barnum.’ “You can do as you think proper about inserting the above in Wednesday’s advertisement--or the small bills. B.”[19] Barnum devoted to charity the proceeds of his lectures, except those delivered on “The Art of Money-Getting” immediately after his bankruptcy. Barnum’s lectures do not read well. They were filled with homely sentiments, platitudes, and the jokes he had used so often before. Although he exhibited flashes of wit, he was not a great humorist. He would have done well to consider Josh Billings’s “Hints to Comik Lekturers”: “No man kan be a helthy phool unless he was nussed at the brest of wisdom. “Those who fail in the comik bizzness are them who hav bin put out to nuss, or bin fetched up on a bottle. “If a man iz a genuine humorist he iz superior tew the bulk ov hiz aujience, and will oftentimes hav tew take hiz pay for hiz services in thinking so.” V The New Museum on Broadway was not so successful as the old, and Barnum joined with Van Amburgh, of Van Amburgh’s Menagerie, in an effort to form a large traveling show, consisting of Barnum’s curiosities and Van Amburgh’s animals, which would tour the country in summer and exhibit at the Museum in winter. Van Amburgh was the most popular lion tamer in the show business, and he was also a good showman: he literally made a lion lie down with a lamb in one of his cages, and he also introduced a little child to lead them. Barnum owned forty per cent. of the stock of the new enterprise, and he lent it his valuable name as general manager, but he did not take an active part in its management. The new combined museum and menagerie was more popular than any other place of amusement in New York, and Barnum made many efforts to add to its collections. John Greenwood, formerly manager of Barnum’s American Museum, was sent abroad in the _Quaker City_, on the same voyage of the ship in which Mark Twain traveled with the Innocents Abroad, and this trip resulted in many new curiosities from the Holy Land. The following letter to a friend in London, written about the time of the partnership with Van Amburgh, will illustrate one of Barnum’s methods of collecting material: