very near tearing to pieces the persons who had brought him from the ship to the Museum. Barnum had not seen the animal; and when he read the account in the _Post_, he was very much excited, and sent immediately to the men to be careful that no one was harmed. The baboon was about as furious as a small-sized kitten. The story did its work, and crowds came to see the wonderful beast. Among others a professor came from the Smithsonian Institute; he examined the animal, and then desired to see Mr. Barnum. He informed the proprietor that he had read the wonderful accounts of the gorilla, and had come to see him. ‘He is a very fine specimen of the baboon,’ said the professor; ‘but he is no gorilla.’ ‘What’s the reason that he is not a gorilla?’ said Barnum. The professor replied, that ‘ordinary gorillas had no tails.’ ‘I own,’ said the showman, ‘that ordinary gorillas have no tails; but mine has, and that makes the specimen the more remarkable.’ The audacity of the reply completely overwhelmed the professor, and he retired, leaving Mr. Barnum in possession of the field. Mr. Barnum’s rule has been to give all who patronise him the worth of their money, without being particular as to the means by which he attracts the crowds to his exhibitions. His aim has been notoriety. He offered the Atlantic Telegraph Company 5,000 dollars for the privilege of first sending twenty words over the wires. It has not been all sunshine with Mr. Barnum. His imposing villa at Bridgeport was burned to the ground. Anxious to build up East Bridgeport, he became responsible to a manufacturing company, and his fortune was swept away in an hour; but with wonderful sagacity he relieved himself. As a business man, he has singular executive force, and great capacity. Men who regard Mr. Barnum as a charlatan, who attribute his success to what he calls humbug, clap-trap, exaggerated pictures, and puffing advertisements, will find that the secret of his success did not lie in that direction. Under all his eccentricity, there was a business energy, tact, perseverance, shrewdness, and industry, without which, all his humbugging would have been exerted in vain. From distributing Sear’s Bible, he became lessee of the Vauxhall Saloon; thence a writer of advertisements for an amphitheatre at four dollars a-week; then negotiating, without a dollar, for the Museum, which was utterly worthless; outwitting a corporation who intended to outwit him on the purchase of the Museum over his head; exhibiting a manufactured mermaid which he had bought of a Boston showman; palming off Tom Thumb as eleven years of age when he was but five; showing his woolly horse, and exhibiting his wild buffaloes at Holcken—these, and other small things that Barnum did, are known to the public; but there are other things which the public did not know. Barnum was thoroughly honest, and he kept his business engagements to the letter. He adopted the most rigid economy.