Everything seemed so straightforward that I was anxious to become proprietor of this novel exhibition, which was offered to me at one thousand dollars, though the price first demanded was three thousand. I had five hundred dollars, borrowed five hundred dollars more, sold out my interest in the grocery business to my partner, and began life as a showman. At the outset of my career I saw that everything depended upon getting people to think, and talk, and become curious and excited over and about the “rare spectacle.” Accordingly, posters, transparencies, advertisements, newspaper paragraphs--all calculated to extort attention--were employed, regardless of expense. My exhibition rooms in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Albany and in other large and small cities, were continually thronged and much money was made. In the following February, Joice Heth died, literally of old age, and her remains received a respectable burial in the town of Bethel. At a post-mortem examination of Joice Heth by Dr. David L. Rogers, in the presence of some medical students, it was thought that the absence of ossification indicated considerably less age than had been assumed for her; but the doctors disagreed, and this “dark subject” will probably always continue to be shrouded in mystery. I had at last found my true vocation. Indeed, soon after I began to exhibit Joice Heth, I had entrusted her to an agent and had entered upon my second step in the show line. The next venture, whatever it may have been in other respects, had the merit of being, in every essential, unmistakably genuine. I engaged from the Albany Museum an Italian who called himself “Signor Antonio” and who performed certain remarkable feats of balancing, stilt-walking, plate-spinning, etc. He had gone from England to Canada, and thence to Albany, and had performed in other American cities. I made terms with him for one year to exhibit anywhere in the United States at twelve dollars a week and expenses, and induced him to change his stage name to “Signor Vivalla.” I then wrote a notice of his wonderful qualities and performances, printed it in one of the Albany papers as news, sent copies to the theatrical managers in New York and in other cities, and went with Vivalla to the metropolis.