About this time I received a letter from Philadelphia proferring $500 in case my circumstances were such that I really stood in need of help. The very wording of the letter awakened the suspicion in my mind that it was a trick to ascertain whether I really had any property, for I knew that banks and brokers in that city held some of my Jerome paper which they refused to compound or compromise. So I at once wrote that I did need $500, and, as I expected, the money did not come, nor was my letter answered; but, as a natural consequence, the Philadelphia bankers who were holding the Jerome paper for a higher percentage at once acceded to the terms which I had announced myself able and willing to pay. Every dollar which I honestly owed on my own account I had already paid in full or had satisfactorily arranged. For the liabilities incurred by the deliberate deception which had involved me I offered such a percentage as I thought my estate, when sold, would eventually pay; and my wife, from her own property, advanced from time to time money to take up such notes as could be secured upon these terms. It was, however, a slow process. More than one creditor would hold on to his note, which possibly he had “shaved” at the rate of two or three per cent a month, and say: “Oh! you can’t keep Barnum down; he will dig out after a while; I shall never sell my claim for less than par and interest.” Of course, I knew very well that if all the creditors took this view I should never get out of the entanglement in which I had been involved by the old creditors of the Jerome Company, who had so ingeniously managed to make me take their place. All I could do was to take a thorough survey of the situation, and consider, now that I was down, how I could get up again.