From an advocate of personal redemption and a propagandist in fear of his soul, Barnum soon became a temperance orator extraordinary, and he was able in his pseudo-public capacity to contribute largely to the cause. Before long he must have been a crank on the subject, for he never missed an opportunity to urge temperance in his personal conversations, and he was always ready to deliver a lecture on the subject. A deep sense of mankind’s obligation to him and a just satisfaction in his accomplishment caused Barnum to tell in his autobiography of the people he saved from themselves and their ruin. In Philadelphia a man came to him to offer thanks for his salvation and brought his partner along. “This gentleman,” said the convert, pointing to his partner, “is my partner in business, and I know that he is glad I have signed the pledge to-night.” “Yes, indeed, I am, George, and it is the best thing you ever did,” replied the frank partner, “if you’ll only stick to it.” “That will I do till the day of my death; and won’t my dear little wife Mary cry for joy to-night when I tell her what I have done!” “At that moment,” wrote Barnum, “he was a happy man--but he could not have been more so than I was.” Soon after he was convinced of the advantage of temperance, Barnum became a prohibitionist and advocated prohibiting by law the sale of liquor. In 1853 the _New York Illustrated News_, a weekly newspaper in which Barnum owned a third of the stock, reported the following meeting: “P. T. Barnum, Esq., lately addressed a very large Temperance meeting at Metropolitan Hall, New York. In the course of his speech, he said that Intemperance was the cause of an annual expenditure or loss of two hundred and fifty millions of dollars in this nation. In this city he estimated that there were 7,000 grog shops, and allowing that the expenditure in each averaged $10 per day, the aggregate in one year’s time would be $25,550,000 besides the wholesale business. He offered, if the city would give him that sum and stop liquor-selling for one year, to pay all the city taxes, amounting to about four millions, send every child to a good school, present every family with a library of one hundred good books, three barrels of flour, and a silk dress to every female, old or young, a suit of broadcloth to every male citizen, old or young, and an admission to each to the Museum.” Barnum never forgot to advertise the Museum. And the Museum was also devoted to Temperance. A pamphlet called _Sights and Wonders of New York, including a description of the miracles, marvels, phenomena, curiosities, and nondescripts, contained in that great Congress of Wonders, Barnum’s Museum_, which is an account of the trip of a supposititious uncle and his nephews through the Museum, gave the following evidence of the extension of Barnum’s temperance activities to the Museum: