Since Barnum’s death in 1891 there has been ample time to estimate accurately his influence and position in our life. It is my conviction that both of these were important. A distinguished American editor said recently that he considers Lincoln and Barnum the most typical American figures, and that he is rather afraid to think which is the more typical. William Roscoe Thayer wrote in _The Life of John Hay_: “If the question had been asked during the third quarter of the nineteenth century, ‘Who is the typical American of this period?’ a perspicacious observer might have replied, ‘Phineas T. Barnum.’” And it is because he was so typical and at the same time so unique that Barnum remains to-day one of the outstanding figures of our national life, for Barnum was a most typical American without ever becoming an average American. In newspapers, books, and magazines we frequently see the sentence, “P. T. Barnum was right.” There was a popular song beginning, “P. T. Barnum had the right idea.” But the people to-day who use these expressions are rather doubtful of the details of the showman’s social psychology, which made him successful, and therefore right. That social psychology is usually summed up popularly in the phrase attributed to him, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” But there was more to Barnum than that, and it is the purpose of this book to give an impression of that idea, or group of ideas, which has interested the world in Barnum since the year 1841, when Barnum’s American Museum opened its doors at Ann Street and Broadway. The things that Barnum did were often so curious, sometimes so incredible, and always so picturesque, that the reader may be inclined to doubt their accuracy. I am not writing a romance, however, and there is ample authority for every statement and anecdote included in this book; the bibliography at the end indicates the sources of information. The footnote is one of the banes of a reader’s continued interest. If he is a curious reader, the footnote plagues him with the necessity to look at the bottom of the page; if he is a cursory reader, the footnote which he skips is always an annoyance because he is compelled to skip it. Therefore, I have omitted, at the risk of being called a romancer and in the hope of being more entertaining, all footnotes except those absolutely necessary to my reputation for veracity. Many persons have aided me in the composition of this book. My thanks are especially due to Leonidas Westervelt, whose private collection of Barnum and Jenny Lind books, pamphlets, and letters, which is probably the largest in existence, he so kindly placed at my disposal; to C. Barnum Seeley, for information about his grandfather; to Harry Houdini, for permission to use pictures and showbills from his huge private collection of theatrical material; to Elizabeth Hall Dietz, for valuable assistance; and to the New York Public Library and the Harvard College Library.