Barnum advertised in the New York newspapers that he had $2,500 to invest in a reliable business and wanted a partner with such an organized business. He received ninety-three answers, one third from saloonkeepers and the rest from interesting miscellaneous promoters. One man was a counterfeiter and needed Barnum’s $2,500, he admitted, to purchase paper, ink, and new dies. Finally Barnum entered into partnership with Proler, a German manufacturer of water-proof blacking for boots, Cologne water, and bear’s grease. Proler took charge of the factory, and Barnum opened a store on the Bowery, where he sold the products of the factory. Their capital, that is, Barnum’s money, was soon absorbed, and Barnum sold his interest to his partner, taking Proler’s note for $2,600. Before his note came due, Proler sailed for Rotterdam, and Barnum was left with nothing for his $2,500 but four recipes, one for bear’s grease, which grew hair on a bald head, one for Cologne water, one for blacking, and one for water-proof paste.[3] Without money again, Barnum was also without employment in the spring of 1840. He hired the saloon of Vauxhall Garden in New York and offered a variety performance, in which Mary Taylor, later one of the country’s favorites, first appeared in New York. Jack Diamond, the first, and for a long time the most popular, dancer of negro dances in this country, also performed under Barnum’s management. But the Vauxhall Garden venture did not make money, and after less than two months Barnum was forced to close his show. He hated the thought of once more becoming a traveling showman, separated from family, but he had just enough money left for one more trial at this business, and he took Master Jack Diamond, the dancer, a fiddler, and a delineator of Yankee characters on a tour of Canada, New York State, and the Northwest. They finally reached New Orleans, and Barnum had $100. He had left New York with that amount, so that his four months’ tour had yielded nothing but expenses. In New Orleans the receipts were good, but Master Diamond, who had borrowed large sums from Barnum, absconded, and Barnum returned to New York in April, 1841, determined never to leave it again in the capacity of traveling showman. He was thirty-one years old, and had had varied experiences, but no success. The foundation of his subsequent career was being laid, but up to this time the small accident which starts one on the way to partial realization of dreams had not yet happened to him. Barnum had tried vigorously to contribute by his enterprise to his success, but the financial depression that reigned throughout the country during this period, together with losses sustained by the duplicity of a partner, or the state of the weather, caused him to find himself at the age of thirty-one in the same financial position he had occupied upon his arrival in New York five years before.