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Thorp's place was a great resort for Bethel and Danbury hatters and combmakers. At this time Barnum formed his first taste for the theatre. He went to the play regularly and soon set up for a critic. It was his one dissipation, however.

Yes, it was certainly a success, and he experienced the first bitterness of it as soon as he arrived the next morning at the Cafe de Seville, where he now went every two or three days at the hour for absinthe. His verses had appeared in that morning's Tapage, printed in large type and headed by a few lines of praise written by Victor Gaillard, a la Barnum.

She looked at him with genuine alarm this time. "That will do, Mandy," Douglas commanded, feeling an unwelcome drama gathering about his head. "Great Barnum and Bailey!" Polly exclaimed, looking at him as though he were the very last thing in the world she had ever expected to see. "Are you a skypilot?" "That's what he am, chile."

"Barnum would not like that, probably, if he knew it," I remarked. "But it happens he don't know it," replied the ticket-seller, in great glee. "Barnum was on the cars the other day, on his way to Bridgeport," said I, "and I heard one of the passengers blowing him up terribly as a humbug. He was addressing Barnum at the time, but did not know him.

When the enterprising Yankee writes his true autobiography we shall doubtless find some extraordinary revelations. Yet Barnum, after all, makes no pretence of morality or religion. He merely goes in for making a handsome fortune out of the curiosity and credulity of the public. If he were questioned as to his principles, he would probably reply like Artemus Ward "Princerpuls? I've nare a one.

'Twould be as bad as Barnum losing the giraffe." The occupants of the first boat were evidently of the captain's own mind, for they were eagerly peering over her side, and into the water. Suddenly the pilot dropped his glass, extemporized a. trumpet with both hands, and shouted: "Forrard forrard! One of 'em's up!"

"Well," said Barnum, "you figure our bill up right now and do not include dinner for any of us, for we are leaving you right now, and will never bring a customer to this house again and never come here to get a passenger nor any one's baggage. In fact, our teams will never come down the hill again to this house, we're quittin'."

H. Donaldson, by far the most brilliant and daring professional aeronaut of his day, and a clever athlete and gymnast. For several weeks prior to the ascent of the Barnum, Donaldson had been making daily short ascents of an hour or two from the Hippodrome in a small balloon as a feature of the performance.

Barnum presently began to be alarmed lest some one should buy an elephant and thus share the fate of the man who drew one in a lottery and did not know what to do with him. "Accordingly," he says, "I had a general letter printed, which I mailed to all my anxious inquirers.

They came along presently and we started loading. Barnum & Bailey's circus never loaded a train as fast as we did that one. When we were loaded I was handed my train orders and a big yellow ticket on which was marked the halts and times to eat. We had at least a twenty-four hour run ahead of us. I was told that when I got to Rouen we would get further orders.