In those days there were no passes given. Search the Scriptures. “Thou shalt not pass.”--_Numbers_ xx. 18. “Suffer not a man to pass.”--_Judges_ iii. 28. “The wicked shall no more pass.”--_Nahum_ i. 15. “None shall pass.”--_Isaiah_ xxxiv. 10. “This generation shall not pass.”--_Mark_ xiii. 30. “Beware that thou pass not.”--_2d Kings_ vi. 9. “There shall no strangers pass.”--_Amos_ iii. 17. “Neither any son of man pass.”--_Jeremiah_ li. 43. “No man may pass through because of the beasts.”--_Ezekiel_ xiv. 15. “Though they roar, yet they cannot pass.”--_Jeremiah_ v. 22. “So he paid the fare thereof and went.”--_Jonah_ i. 3. The clergymen were grateful for their passes, and sometimes mentioned the circus from the pulpit, advising their congregations to attend this strictly moral exhibition, of interest and instruction to all. The show depended for its success on winning the patronage of thousands of persons in small towns who rarely saw any newspapers except country weeklies, but who seldom missed Sunday attendance at church. By reiteration in his advance notices and his programs, and by careful supervision of the show itself, Barnum impressed upon his patrons the fact that his circus was reputable and moral. “The reverend clergy and school teachers of both sexes throughout our land are among my firmest friends,” Barnum wrote in his program notes for 1879, “and strongest supporters of my great moral exhibition. I am both a husband and a father, and I will _never_ place any entertainment before the public that a Christian mother cannot patronize in every department, with her innocent daughters, with pleasure and profit.” Not a broad joke nor a suggestive gesture was allowed a clown in Barnum’s Great Moral Show. In his program he assured his patrons: “I desire to elevate the morals and refine the tastes of my patrons. In fine, I aspire to make the world _better_ for my having lived in it.”