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
“Yes, and who says they haint beautiful?” retorted the other; “they was
made by the best Hitalian hartist in this country.”
“They was made by Jim Caul, and showed all over the country twenty years
ago,” rejoined another; “and arter that they laid five years in pawn in
old Moll Wiggin’s cellar, covered with mould and dust.”
“Well, that’s a good ’un, that is!” replied the proprietor of the
beautiful wax-works, with a look of disdain.
I made a move to depart, when one of the head showmen exclaimed, “Come,
Mister, don’t be shabby; can you think of going without standing treat
all round?”
“Why should I stand treat?” I asked.
“‘Cause ’tain’t every day you can meet such a bloody lot of jolly
brother-showmen,” replied Mr. Wax-works.
I handed out a crown, and left them to drink bad luck to the “foreign
wagabonds what would bamboozle their Queen with inferior dwarfs,
possessing no advantage over the ‘natyves’ but the power of chaffing.”
While in the showmen’s vans seeking for acquisitions to my Museum in
America, I was struck with the tall appearance of a couple of females
who exhibited as the “Canadian giantesses, each seven feet in height.”
Suspecting that a cheat was hidden under their unfashionably long
dresses, which reached to the floor and thus rendered their feet
invisible, I attempted to solve the mystery by raising a foot or two of
the superfluous covering. The strapping young lady, not relishing such
liberties from a stranger, laid me flat upon the floor with a blow from
her brawny hand. I was on my feet again in tolerably quick time, but not
until I had discovered that she stood upon a pedestal at least eighteen
inches high.
We returned to the hotel, took a post-chaise, and drove through
decidedly the most lovely country I ever beheld. Since taking that tour,
I have heard that two gentlemen once made a bet, each, that he could
name the most delightful drive in England. Many persons were present,
and the two gentlemen wrote on separate slips of paper the scene which
he most admired. One gentleman wrote, “The road from Warwick to
Coventry;” the other had written, “The road from Coventry to Warwick.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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