He was often kept out of school to help on his father’s farm, and he records as one of his earliest emotions an aversion to hand-work that earned him a reputation as the laziest boy in town. This impression of him by his neighbors, however, was false, Barnum said, “because I was always busy at head-work to evade the sentence of gaining bread by the sweat of my brow.” Throughout his life he hated manual labor and routine work, but the number of enterprises in which he sometimes engaged simultaneously would indicate that he never disliked work if he was allowed to choose its nature. What Barnum called “my organ of acquisitiveness” was large. At an early age he earned money by selling cherry-rum to soldiers, and when he was twelve years old he owned a sheep, a calf, and a sum of money in his own right. He would have been a wealthy boy for his environment, if his father had not insisted that he buy his own clothes. When he was about twelve years old, Barnum paid his first visit to New York City, assisting a neighbor to deliver a drove of cattle there. To “go to York” from Connecticut in 1821 was not a trip, but a journey, which had some of the elements of a pilgrimage; it took Phineas four days to reach the big city with his cattle. During this period passengers traveled from Connecticut to New York via the New York-Boston stage coach or by boat via Long Island Sound. The stage coach was not allowed to take on passengers in any Connecticut town on Sunday, and any man who rode on horseback or in his carriage before sundown on the Lord’s Day was arrested by a deacon of the church. If the stage coach driver was found with passengers in his possession, he was arrested by meeting house sentinels, posted along the Connecticut route of the coach. In Barnum’s youth the Blue Laws were Connecticut’s contribution to American life. The voyage to New York by boat depended upon the state of the wind, sometimes requiring eight hours and sometimes several days. Barnum’s grandfather, Phineas Taylor, took this voyage upon an occasion which gave him an opportunity to enact what seemed to impress his grandson as Phineas Taylor’s most famous practical joke. On this particular voyage the fourteen jolly jokers from Bethel were becalmed for seven days, at the end of which all needed to shave. There was one razor on board, belonging to Phineas Taylor, who professed himself against the practice of shaving and refused the loan of his razor. Finally, the boat approached New York on Sunday afternoon. Barnum’s grandfather was persuaded to lend his razor since the barber shops would be closed when the party arrived in New York. Because time was short, he stipulated that each man must shave half his face and pass the razor on to the next. After all had finished, each could begin shaving the other half of his face. Half of each face was shaved, and Phineas Taylor began on the other half of his own face. When he had finished, Barnum’s grandfather stropped the