It was the world’s way, Barnum wrote, “to promise everything for next to nothing,” and he confessed that he fell rapidly into that way and excelled in it. This, he insisted, was not because he was less scrupulous, but because he was more ingenious and energetic than his competitors. However, there were instances of deception in which Barnum allowed the association of ideas to work to his advantage. He promised nothing, but allowed an innocent observer to jump to his own conclusions, contributing by his advertisements a slight shove in the wrong direction. The best of these was Barnum’s exploitation of a negro violinist. He engaged this negro artist, who had a foreign musical education and a reputation in musical circles, to play at the Museum, and he advertised the negro widely, but the public did not appear to be interested. The receipts did not increase, and Barnum issued instructions for the large colored posters, showing the negro violinist in action, to be posted on the boards upside down. This was no sooner carried out than the Museum was crowded, on the assumption that the negro violinist played the violin while standing on his head. It was a source of great disappointment to many when they only heard him play the violin right side up, but, said Barnum, never mind, they had the Industrious Fleas and the Albinos for their money. Barnum’s first object was publicity for the Museum and for the name of P. T. Barnum, and he went to any lengths to carry out those purposes. He soon succeeded in making his Museum and his personality the talk of New York, and it was then his ambition to make them national institutions. In his use of the newspapers, which seemed in those days to be naïve in the extreme, he was indefatigable. Many years later Barnum told a reporter for the _Indianapolis Journal_: “In the old Museum days ... night after night at the midnight hour, and later, I crawled up these several newspaper staircases to put in these journals some fresh and startling announcement about my business. I even did this after the editor had gone home, but the foreman in the composing room had some authority then and would often put the matter I offered in type or make an announcement for me.” Barnum added, “If I am ever profoundly thankful for any instrumentalities, it is for the editor and his paper. They furnish the wind for my sails.” Barnum owed this debt of gratitude, but he must be given credit as the inventor of steam navigation in the seas of publicity.[4] The editors of the day were not philanthropists, and Barnum worked in devious ways for his notoriety. It was his genius that he realized the value in dollars and cents of his name and his activities and at the same time attached no estimable value to the character he might establish in the world. Charlatan, humbug, mountebank, and impostor were names he delighted in and conjured with, and it was possible for him to do so because his