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Updated: June 4, 2025
Stratton, Tom Thumb's father, was now a rich man, and he settled a handsome fortune upon his tiny son. Soon a tour of America was arranged, the party consisting of Mr. Barnum and Tom Thumb and his parents. They began at Washington, in April, 1847, where they visited President and Mrs. Polk at the White House.
Tom Thumb's mother once took him with her when she went to milk the cow; and it being a very windy day, she tied him with a needleful of thread to a thistle, that he might not be blown away. The cow liking his oak leaf hat took him and the thistle up at one mouthful.
On the occasion of my first appearance before Queen Victoria, the Duke of Wellington asked me what sphere in life General Tom Thumb's parents were in. "His father is a carpenter," I replied. "Oh! I had heard he was a gentleman," was the response of His Grace. In this Republican country, the man makes the business.
He always said that pictures were no good future disguises could make them useless; 'The thumb's the only sure thing, said he; 'you can't disguise that. And he used to prove his theory, too, on my friends and acquaintances; it always succeeded. I went on telling fortunes. Every night I shut myself in, all alone, and studied the day's thumb-prints with a magnifying-glass.
Accordingly he made an agreement for General Tom Thumb's services for another year, at fifty dollars a week and all expenses, with the privilege of exhibiting him in Europe. He proposed to test the curiosity of men and women on the other side of the Atlantic.
But the most fortunate day in all his life was that November day of 1842, when he discovered at Bridgeport, Connecticut, the midget whose real name was Charles S. Stratton, but who was to become world-famous as General Tom Thumb. The story of Tom Thumb's success reads like a romance.
And as time drew on the half-breed's hatred against all white men seemed to concentrate into a mighty rage against this one white man. There had been times when he could have killed him from afar. More than once on the trail Wentworth unconsciously stood with the sights of Alex Thumb's rifle trained upon his head, or his heart.
And, ever since the unfolding of the first bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither. At times, it seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there was one of these tiniest fowls of the air, a thumb's bigness of burnished plumage, hovering and vibrating about the bean-poles.
"Your mester's got hurt," he said. "Eh, dear me!" she exclaimed. "It's a wonder if he hadn't, lad. And what's he done this time?" "I don't know for sure, but it's 'is leg somewhere. They ta'ein' 'im ter th' 'ospital." "Good gracious me!" she exclaimed. "Eh, dear, what a one he is! There's not five minutes of peace, I'll be hanged if there is! His thumb's nearly better, and now Did you see him?"
The anecdotes, whatever they may be worth, of Alfred and the burnt cakes, and of Tom Thumb's mamma and her Christmas pudding, made in a bowl, of which the principal material was pork, stand almost alone; for we get, wherever we look, nothing but descriptions by learned and educated men of their equals or betters, how they fed and what they ate their houses, their furniture, their weapons, and their dress.
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