Struggles and Triumphs: or, Forty Years' Recollections of P. T. BarnumBarnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor)
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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
An amusing incident occurred when we were at Hanover Court House, in
Virginia. It rained so heavily that we could not perform there and
Turner decided to start for Richmond immediately after dinner, when he
was informed by the landlord that as our agent had engaged three meals
and lodging for the whole company, the entire bill must be paid whether
we went then, or next morning. No compromise could be effected with the
stubborn landlord and so Turner proceeded to get the worth of his money
as follows:
He ordered dinner at twelve o’clock, which was duly prepared and eaten.
The table was cleared and re-set for supper at half-past twelve. At one
o’clock we all went to bed, every man carrying a lighted candle to his
room. There were thirty-six of us and we all undressed and tumbled into
bed as if we were going to stay all night. In half an hour we rose and
went down to the hot breakfast which Turner had demanded and which we
found smoking on the table. Turner was very grave, the landlord was
exceedingly angry, and the rest of us were convulsed with laughter at
the absurdity of the whole proceeding. We disposed of our breakfast as
if we had eaten nothing for ten hours and then started for Richmond with
the satisfaction that we fairly settled with our unreasonable landlord.
At Richmond, after performances were over one night, I managed to
partially pay Turner for his Avery trick. A dozen or more of us were
enjoying ourselves in the sitting room of the hotel, telling stories and
singing songs, when some of the company proposed sundry amusing
arithmetical questions, followed by one from Turner, which was readily
solved. Hoping to catch Turner I then proposed the following problem:
“Suppose a man is thirty years of age and he has a child one year of
age; he is thirty times older than his child. When the child is thirty
years old, the father, being sixty, is only twice as old as his child.
When the child is sixty the father is ninety, and therefore only
one-third older than the child. When the child is ninety the father is
one hundred and twenty, and therefore only one-fourth older than the
child. Thus you see, the child is gradually but surely gaining on the
parent, and as he certainly continues to come nearer and nearer, in time
he must overtake him. The question therefore is, suppose it was possible
for them to live long enough, how old would the father be when the child
overtook him and became of the same age?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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