character was a composite of Baron Munchausen and Pecksniff, with an intensely practical turn of mind. He was the father of publicity in a country where it may be said to have grown to be a monster akin to Frankenstein’s, and his child supported him in luxury for many years. He combined with a genial temperament that would not allow him to worry about details a rhinoceros hide that refused to allow the slings and arrows of outraged editors and citizens to penetrate to his heart; his disposition was such that it was inevitable that he should succeed as an exploiter of monstrous hoaxes or legitimate extravaganzas. IV The greatest of Barnum’s early curiosities, if we are to judge from the controversy caused by its exhibition, was The Fejee Mermaid. In the summer of 1842 the proprietor of the Boston Museum, Moses Kimball, brought to Barnum a figure supposed to be a preserved mermaid. Kimball had purchased it from a sailor, whose father, the captain of an American ship, bought it in Calcutta and honestly believed it to be a preserved mermaid found by Japanese sailors off the coast of Japan. The captain thought so highly of this mermaid that he appropriated $6,000 of the ship’s funds in order to purchase it. His employers did not think so highly of his purchase, and the captain was forced to serve on his ship without pay until he had made up the misappropriation. He died in that service, leaving to his son nothing but the mermaid. Barnum wrote that he was much impressed with the genuineness of this article of his commerce, but he did not trust his own judgment alone. He consulted his favorite naturalist, who had advised him on other phenomena. The naturalist, after a careful examination, admitted that he could find no sign of joining or other traces of artificial manufacture, but he shook his head dubiously and said that he had never seen a monkey with such strange arms and teeth, nor a fish with such queer fins. Barnum asked why he should assume that it was manufactured. “Because,” answered the naturalist, “I don’t believe in mermaids.” Barnum thought that was bad logic; he preferred for the purposes of the occasion to believe in mermaids, and he hired this one. But to believe in mermaids yourself, and to make the public believe in mermaids, are not synonymous. However, Barnum’s confidence in the general credulity of his patrons was not unfounded upon both precedent and his own experience. He had learned much from Joice Heth, and this same mermaid had been exhibited in London twenty years before by the sea captain who owned it, and according to the London _Times_ of the period every day three hundred persons paid a shilling each to see it.