The newspapers took up Joice Heth readily. The _New York Evening Star_ wrote: “Her appearance is much like an Egyptian mummy just escaped from its sarcophagus.” And the _New York Daily Advertiser_ said of her: “Ancient or modern times furnish no parallel to the great age of this woman. Methuselah was 969 years old when he died, but nothing is said of the age of his wife. Adam attained nearly the age of his antiquated descendant. It is not unlikely that the sex in the olden time were like the daughters at the present day--unwilling to tell their age. Joice Heth is an exception; she comes out boldly, and says she is rising 160.” Joice Heth was an habitual smoker of a corn cob pipe, and when a reporter of the _Evening Star_ asked her how long she had smoked a pipe, she answered glibly, “One hundred and twenty years.” Barnum acknowledged in his autobiography that Joice Heth taught him many facts about the Washington family which he never knew before. The gross receipts in New York for the Joice Heth exhibition were $1,500 each week. Visitors continued for some weeks to come to Niblo’s Garden, asked her questions about the Washington family, listened to her sing hymns and discuss theology, and departed satisfied as to her age and previous condition of servitude. After the New York public had paid all the tribute it was likely to pay, Barnum toured New England with his slave, exhibiting at Providence, Boston, and other large cities. In Boston he met Maelzel, who was then exhibiting his automaton chess-player. Barnum enjoyed many conversations with this inventor and showman, whom he regarded as the father of public entertainers. Maelzel told Barnum that he would succeed as a showman, “because you understand the value of the press, and that is the great thing. Nothing helps the showman like the types and the ink.” “When your old woman dies,” he added, “you come to me, and I will make your fortune.” Barnum kept up a steady stream of publicity concerning Joice Heth, and when the Boston audiences began to decrease in numbers, a notice appeared in one of the newspapers signed, “A Visitor,” in which it was stated that Joice Heth was a humbug, that she was made of india rubber, whalebone, and hidden springs, and that the exhibitor was a ventriloquist, which accounted for her powers of conversation. The presence of Maelzel’s automaton in the same city, in fact, in the same hall, made this announcement more interesting to the public. Those who had not seen Joice Heth went to see the ingenious mechanism, and those who had seen her went again to satisfy themselves that she was not alive. Barnum thus created controversy, which he realized from the beginning of his career was the life of trade in the show business.