There were two other things that attracted Jenny Lind to Barnum: he was the only manager who did not ask her to share in the losses as well as the profits, and she liked the picture of “Iranistan” that was engraved on Barnum’s letterhead. After she came to this country and stayed a night at “Iranistan,” she said to Barnum: “Do you know, Mr. Barnum, if you had not built ‘Iranistan,’ I should never have come to America for you? I had received several applications to visit the United States,” she explained, “but I did not much like the appearance of the applicants, nor did I relish the idea of crossing 3,000 miles of ocean; so I declined them all. But the first letter which Mr. Wilton addressed me was written on a sheet headed with a beautiful engraving of ‘Iranistan.’ It attracted my attention. I said to myself, a gentleman who has been so successful in his business as to be able to build and reside in such a palace cannot be a mere adventurer.’ So I wrote to your agent, and consented to an interview, which I should have declined, if I had not seen the picture of ‘Iranistan’!” Which was a confirmation of Barnum’s already firm conviction that it pays to advertise. However, the story is not so simple as Jenny Lind made it. As her letters and her biographers show, she had been considering a tour of the United States for some time. In 1849 she was at the height of her popularity, and in that year she had abandoned forever the medium through which she had gained that popularity, the opera. After much profound feeling, rather than thought, on the subject, she had come to the conclusion, induced by the influences surrounding her throughout her life, that to sing in opera was immoral, that the stage was immoral, and that opera was merely drama set to music. The dangers and pitfalls surrounding a virtuous prima donna, as well as the innuendoes and implications, were not, in the opinion of Jenny Lind, worth the adulation she received everywhere. She had determined never again to sing in opera as long as she lived, and she kept to that determination. But she had another profound desire: she wanted money, not for herself, but in order to endow a hospital for poor children in Stockholm, where she was born. Before her American tour she had enough money to use for her own comfort for life, but she did not have enough for her hospital, and she could never be thoroughly happy without the great sense of personal satisfaction which her charities gave her. In order to carry out this desire, she was considering a Russian tour, at the invitation of royal personages, when Barnum’s offer came. She did not much like the idea of a Russian tour, because Josephine, her constant companion and religious mentor for many years, Mlle. Josephine Åhmansson, was ill and could not tour Russia in comfort. There is also in Jenny Lind’s correspondence the hint of another reason, always powerful with her. Russia was too much like France, which she hated and never had visited