Struggles and Triumphs: or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. BarnumBarnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor)
General
Struggles and Triumphs: or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. Barnum
Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor)
Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891; Circus owners -- United States -- Biography
The police were notified, and I offered 2,000 francs reward for the
recovery of the property. A day or two afterwards a man went into a
jeweller’s shop and offered for sale, among other things, a gold
snuff-box, mounted with turquoises, and presented by the Duke of
Devonshire to the General. The jeweller, seeing the General’s initials
on the box, sharply questioned the man, who became alarmed and ran out
of the shop. An alarm was raised, and the man was caught. He made a
clean breast of it, and in the course of a few hours the entire property
was returned, to the great delight of the General and myself. Wherever
we exhibited afterwards, no matter how respectable the audience, the
case of presents was always carefully watched.
While I was in Brussels I could do no less than visit the battle-field
of Waterloo, and I proposed that our party should be composed of
Professor Pinte, Mr. Stratton, father of General Tom Thumb, Mr. H. G.
Sherman, and myself. Going sight-seeing was a new sensation to Stratton,
and as it was necessary to start by four o’clock in the morning, in
order to accomplish the distance (sixteen miles) and return in time for
our afternoon performance, he demurred.
“I don’t want to get up before daylight and go off on a journey for the
sake of seeing a darned old field of wheat,” said Stratton.
“Sherwood, do try to be like somebody, once in your life, and go,” said
his wife.
The appeal was irresistible, and he consented. We engaged a coach and
horses the night previous, and started punctually at the hour appointed.
We stopped at the neat little church in the village of Waterloo, for the
purpose of examining the tablets erected to the memory of some of the
English who fell in the contest. Thence we passed to the house in which
the leg of Lord Uxbridge (Marquis of Anglesey) was amputated. A neat
little monument in the garden designates the spot where the shattered
member had been interred. In the house is shown a part of the boot which
is said to have once covered the unlucky leg. The visitor feels it but
considerate to hand a franc or two to the female who exhibits the
monument and limb. I did so, and Stratton, though he felt that he had
not received the worth of his money, still did not like to be considered
penurious, so he handed over a piece of silver coin to the attendant. I
expressed a desire to have a small piece of the boot to exhibit in my
Museum; the lady cut off, without hesitation, a slip three inches long
by one in width. I handed her a couple more francs, and Stratton
desiring, as he said, to “show a piece of the boot in old Bridgeport,”
received a similar slip, and paid a similar amount. I could not help
thinking that if the lady was thus liberal in dispensing pieces of the
“identical boot” to all visitors, this must have been about the
ninety-nine thousandth boot that had been cut as the “Simon pure” since
1815.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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