Barnum had no money worth mentioning when he arrived in New York. In Connecticut he had made large sums of money for his age and for his environment, but he had also spent large sums without any anxiety about his ability to continue to earn then. He sought in New York for an opportunity with a business organization, where he could share in the profits rather than work for a fixed salary. Business was bad, opportunities were limited, and Barnum found nothing to his taste. His money began to disappear, and his family was in ill health; in order to relieve immediate needs, he became a “drummer” in a cap store and watched the “Want” advertisements in _The Sun_. In his mind was the fixed idea that if he could get something to exhibit to the New York amusement-loving public, he would succeed. But, meanwhile, he answered advertisements of inventors and adventurers, always to discover that they wanted money immediately in order to produce it in the future. Barnum’s present was immediate in its demands, and he could not afford to consider a vague future, but his self-confidence in the face of hardship was great enough to enable him to refuse to bind himself for three years when he applied to William Niblo, proprietor of Niblo’s Garden, for the position as bartender at that establishment. Barnum did not get the position, for William Niblo, who was later one of Barnum’s good friends, insisted that his bartender must contract for three years of service. During the entire winter of 1834 he could find no work, except as commission agent for the cap store, which was not very profitable. In the spring of 1835 he received several hundred dollars of the debts owed to him in Bethel for groceries and lottery tickets, and with the money he opened a private boarding house at 52 Frankfort Street. The Connecticut transients stopped at Barnum’s when in New York, and soon Barnum and his wife had enough trade to enable him to capitalize his spare time by purchasing an interest in a grocery store. Mr. Coley Bartram, of Redding, Connecticut, called at Barnum’s grocery store in July, 1835. He mentioned to Barnum that he had just sold his interest in an extraordinary negress, and he handed him a copy of _The Pennsylvania Inquirer_ for July 15, 1835, with the following advertisement: “CURIOSITY.--The citizens of Philadelphia and its vicinity have an opportunity of witnessing at the Masonic Hall, one of the greatest natural curiosities ever witnessed, viz., JOICE HETH, a negress aged 161 years, who formerly belonged to the father of Gen. Washington. She has been a member of the Baptist Church one hundred and sixteen years, and can rehearse many hymns, and sing them according to former custom. She was born near the old Potomac River in Virginia, and has for ninety or one hundred years lived in Paris, Kentucky, with the Bowling family.