“It would be unpardonable to forget the great Barnum,” says a New York writer, “one of our most remarkable men. He lives among the millionaires in a costly brown-stone house in Fifth Avenue, corner of Thirty-ninth Street, and is a millionaire himself. He has retired from the details of actual life, though he has the controlling interest of the Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum. He has made and lost several fortunes; but, in the evening of life, he is in possession of wealth, which he expends with great liberality and a genial hospitality. He was born at Bethel, Connecticut, and was trained in a village tavern kept by his father. He had a hopeful buoyant disposition, and was distinguished by his irrepressible love of fun. At the age of fifteen he began life for himself, and married when he was nineteen. As editor of the _Herald of Freedom_, he obtained an American notoriety. The paper was distinguished for its pith and vigour. Owing to sharp comments on officials, Mr. Barnum was shut up in gaol. On the day of his liberation his friends assembled in great force, with carriages, bands of music, and flags, and carried him home. His first appearance as an exhibitor was in connection with an old negress, Joyce Heth, the reputed nurse of Washington. His next attempt was to obtain possession of Scudder’s American Museum. Barnum had not five dollars in the world, nor did he pay any down. The concern was little better than a corpse ready for burial, yet he bound himself down by terms fearfully stringent, and met all the conditions as they matured. He secured the person of Charles S. Stretton, the celebrated dwarf, and exhibited him. He also secured the services of Jenny land, binding himself to pay her 1,000 dollars a-night for 150 nights, assuming all expenses of every kind. The contract proved an immense pecuniary success. From the days of Joyce Heth, to the present time, Mr. Barnum has always had some speciality connected with his show, which the world pronounces humbug; and Mr. Barnum does not deny that they are so. Among these are the Woolly Horse, the Buffalo Hunt, the Ploughing Elephant, the Segal Mermaid, the What-is-it, and the Gorilla. But Mr. Barnum claims that, while these special features may not be all that the public expect, every visitor to the exhibition gets the worth of his money ten times over; that his million curiosities and monstrosities, giants, and dwarfs, his menagerie and dramatic entertainments, present a diversified and immense amount of entertainment that cannot be secured anywhere else. A large or red baboon, upon a recent occasion, was exhibited at the Museum. It was advertised as a living gorilla, the only one ever exhibited in America. Mr. Barnum’s agents succeeded in hoodwinking the press to such a degree, that the respectable dailies described the ferocity of this formidable gorilla, whose rage was represented to be so intense, and his strength so fearful, that he was