“Come now, old fellow,” said I, “what will you take for the entire lot of those traps? I want them for my Museum in America.” “No money would buy these valuable historical mementos of a by-gone age,” replied the old porter with a leer. “Never mind,” I exclaimed; “I’ll have them duplicated for my Museum, so that Americans can see them and avoid the necessity of coming here, and in that way I’ll burst up your show.” Albert Smith laughed immoderately at the astonishment of the porter when I made this threat, and I was greatly amused, some years afterwards, when Albert Smith became a successful showman and was exhibiting his “Mont Blanc” to delighted audiences in London, to discover that he had introduced this very incident into his lecture, of course, changing the names and locality. He often confessed that he derived his very first idea of becoming a showman from my talk about the business and my doings, on this charming day when we visited Warwick. The “Warwick races” were coming off that day, within half a mile of the village, and we therefore went down and spent an hour with the multitude. There was very little excitement regarding the races, and we concluded to take a tour through the “penny shows,” the vans of which lined one side of the course for the distance of a quarter of a mile. On applying to enter one van, which had a large pictorial sign of giantesses, white negro, Albino girls, learned pig, big snakes, etc., the keeper exclaimed: “Come, Mister, you is the man what hired Randall, the giant, for ‘Merika, and you shows Tom Thumb; now can you think of paying less than sixpence for going in here?” The appeal was irresistible; so, satisfying his demands, we entered. Upon coming out, a whole bevy of showmen from that and neighboring vans surrounded me, and began descanting on the merits and demerits of General Tom Thumb. “Oh,” says one, “I knows two dwarfs what is better ten times as Tom Thumb.” “Yes,” says another, “there’s no use to talk about Tom Thumb while Melia Patton is above the ground.” “Now, I’ve seen Tom Thumb,” added a third, “and he is a fine little squab, but the only ‘vantage he’s got is he can chaff so well. He chaffs like a man; but I can learn Dick Swift in two months, so that he can chaff Tom Thumb crazy.” “Never mind,” added a fourth, “I’ve got a chap training what you none on you knows, what’ll beat all the ‘thumbs’ on your grapplers.” “No, he can’t,” exclaimed a fifth, “for Tom Thumb has got the name, and you all know the name’s everything. Tom Thumb couldn’t never shine, even in my van, ‘long side of a dozen dwarfs I knows, if this Yankee hadn’t bamboozled our Queen,--God bless her--by getting him afore her half a dozen times.” “Yes, yes,--that’s the ticket,” exclaimed another; “our Queen patronizes everything foreign, and yet she wouldn’t visit my beautiful wax-works to save the crown of Hingland.” “Your beautiful wax-works!” they all exclaimed, with a hearty laugh.