Mr. Barnum wanted me to write his Life. This would have been amusing work and profitable, but I shrunk from the idea of being identified with it. I might as well have done it, for I believe that Dr. Griswold performed the task, and the public never knew or cared anything about it. But my jolly companions at Dan Bixby's used to inquire of me at what hour we fed the monkeys, and whether the Great Gyascutus ever gave me any trouble; and I was sensitive to such insinuations. At this time Mr. Barnum's great moral curiosity was a bearded lady, a jolly and not bad-looking Frenchwoman, whose beard was genuine enough, as I know, having pulled it. My own beard has been described by a French newspaper as _une barbe de Charlemagne_, a very polite pun, but hers was much fuller. It was soft as floss silk. After a while the capillary attraction ceased to draw, and Mr. Barnum thought of an admirable plan to revive it. He got somebody to prosecute him for false pretences and imposture, on the ground that Madame was a man. Then Mr. Barnum had, with the greatest unwillingness and many moral apologies, a medical examination; they might as sensibly have examined Vashishta's cow to find out if it was an Irish bull. Then came the attack on the impropriety of the whole thing, and finally Mr. Barnum's triumphant surrebutter, showing he had most unwillingly been _goaded_ by the attacks of malevolent wretches into an unavoidable course of defence. Of course, spotless innocence came out triumphant. Mr. Barnum's system of innocence was truly admirable. When he had concocted some monstrous cock-and-bull curiosity, he was wont to advertise that "it was with very great reluctance that he presented this unprecedented marvel to the world, as doubts had been expressed as to its genuineness--doubts inspired by the actually apparently incredible amount of attraction in it. All that we ask of an enlightened and honest public is, that it will pass a fair verdict and decide whether it be a humbug or not." So the enlightened public paid its quarters of a dollar, and decided that it _was_ a humbug, and Barnum abode by their decision, and then sent it to another city to be again decided on. I returned to Philadelphia, and to my father's house, and occupied myself with such odds and ends of magazine and other writing as came in my way, and always reading and studying. I was very much depressed at this time, yet not daunted. My year in New York had familiarised me with characteristic phases of American life and manners; my father thought I had gone through a severe mill with rather doubtful characters, and once remarked that I should not judge too harshly of business men, for I had been unusually unfortunate in my experience.