After New York had more than paid for the expenses of The Woolly Horse, Barnum sent the animal to several other large cities, enjoying equal success. Finally, he appeared in Washington, where Barnum planned, as he expressed it, “to pull the wool over the eyes of the politicians.” He was successful in this endeavor for several days, and then Colonel Benton, who was senator from Missouri, and who was the father-in-law of Colonel Frémont, saw The Woolly Horse, and denied publicly and with emphasis that his son-in-law had ever seen the animal. Colonel Benton instituted a suit against Barnum’s agent for obtaining twenty-five cents from him under false pretenses. At the trial the senator testified that he had received many letters from his son-in-law since Colonel Frémont had come out of the mountains, and that no mention had ever been made of The Woolly Horse; he was sure that Colonel Frémont had never seen the animal. But the court was not so sure, for it was decided that the evidence against Barnum’s agent was not substantial enough, and Colonel Benton’s case was dismissed. The publicity of the trial caused an increase in the receipts, and Barnum kept The Woolly Horse in Washington only long enough to satisfy public curiosity without turning his discovery from a joke into an outrage in the public mind. The horse was sent back to Bridgeport, where he was turned loose in a field adjoining Barnum’s new home, and served as an advertisement for P. T. Barnum and his Museum, because every one who passed Bridgeport in the trains saw The Woolly Horse eating Barnum’s grass. This deception enraged the newspaper editors, who had been fooled by it, and delighted the public, who enjoy being fooled at a moderate sum so long as they have plenty of company. It was referred to for many years, along with The Fejee Mermaid, by hostile editors, and particularly by James Gordon Bennett, whenever they wanted to write against Barnum. And he himself grew rather ashamed of it, as he did of Joice Heth and The Fejee Mermaid, for it is only in the first edition of his autobiography that he mentions this deception. CHAPTER V HIS BROTHER’S KEEPER I