We once had with our show a woman whom we were exhibiting for her immense size. To enhance her value as a feature in the eyes of the countrymen she wore a gorgeous crown set with cheap but flashy stones. The crier would tell the people that the crown had been presented to the woman by the Prince of Wales and that it cost, in England, 5,000 pounds. Then the people would go in, examine it, and exclaim: "See the green diamonds and the blue diamonds and the red diamonds!" Once, when I was in a hotel in Wisconsin, I heard two waitresses talking about the show. One said she did not believe the crown cost such an amount. The other said: "Well; we can't tell, of course; we only know what we hear--but wasn't it beautiful!" XII HOW THE GREAT NEW YORK AQUARIUM WAS MADE AND LOST Every prominent showman has had some venture into which he has put his whole heart. Nothing in my career touched and moved me like the great New York Aquarium enterprise. Into this I not only put a fortune--more hundreds of thousands of dollars than were ever put into anything of the kind before or since--but I also invested the ambitions of my life. I was inspired by a profound desire to promote the interests of natural science in what appeared to me its most picturesque and attractive field--the marine world; and everything concerned in this mammoth undertaking exercised a strange fascination over me. All commercialism vanished, and I was as true and devoted a student of the wonders which I had collected as was the most erudite scientist that had ever looked upon that strange assemblage of creatures from the depths of arctic and torrid oceans. Night after night I remained alone in the great museum for the purpose of studying the habits of those fishes which displayed their most peculiar traits while the world slept. The finale of this enterprise was, it seems to me, in keeping with its remarkable character, and anything less picturesque than that which actually transpired in this connection would have fallen short of poetic justice. It is not too much to say that never before had the scientific world been permitted to view so comprehensive a collection of the varied and almost numberless types of deep sea life. Neither money nor pains was spared to the end of maintaining an aquarium approximating that of my fondest dreams. Early in the history of this gigantic enterprise I became associated with a member of one of the great animal importing houses, a German, my partner, although I undertook the active management of the institution. The Aquarium was first opened in October, 1876, the year of the Centennial, and I think I may truthfully say that the former received as frequent mention in the press of the day as did the latter.